湯姆歷險記chapter2 無奈刷墻，戰(zhàn)績輝煌

SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, and
    brimming with life. There was a song in every heart; and if the heart was young the music
    issued at the lips. There was cheer in every face and a spring in every step. The
    locust-trees were in bloom and the fragrance of the blossoms filled the air. Cardiff Hill,
    beyond the village and above it, was green with vegetation and it lay just far enough away
    to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting.

    Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He
    surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his
    spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and
    existence but a burden. Sighing, he dipped his brush and passed it along the topmost
    plank; repeated the operation; did it again; compared the insignificant whitewashed streak
    with the far-reaching continent of unwhitewashed fence, and sat down on a tree-box
    discouraged. Jim came skipping out at the gate with a tin pail, and singing "Buffalo Gals.
    Bringing water from the town pump had always been hateful work in Tom's eyes, before, but
    now it did not strike him so. He remembered that there was company at the pump. White,
    mulatto, and negro boys and girls were always there waiting their turns, resting, trading
    playthings, quarrelling, fighting, skylarking. And he remembered that although the pump
    was only a hundred and fifty yards off, Jim never got back with a bucket of water under an
    hour -- and even then somebody generally had to go after him. Tom said:

    "Say, Jim, I'll fetch the water if you'll whitewash some."

    Jim shook his head and said:

    "Can't, Mars Tom. Ole missis, she tole me I got to go an' git dis water an' not
    stop foolin' roun' wid anybody. She say she spec' Mars Tom gwine to ax me to whitewash,
    an' so she tole me go 'long an' 'tend to my own business -- she 'lowed she'd 'tend to de
    whitewashin'."

    "Oh, never you mind what she said, Jim. That's the way she always talks. Gimme the
    bucket -- I won't be gone only a a minute. SHE won't ever know."

    "Oh, I dasn't, Mars Tom. Ole missis she'd take an' tar de head off'n me. 'Deed she
    would."

    "She! She never licks anybody -- whacks 'em over the head with her thimble -- and
    who cares for that, I'd like to know. She talks awful, but talk don't hurt -- anyways it
    don't if she don't cry. Jim, I'll give you a marvel. I'll give you a white alley!"

    Jim began to waver.

    "White alley, Jim! And it's a bully taw."

    "My! Dat's a mighty gay marvel, I tell you! But Mars Tom I's powerful 'fraid ole
    missis --"

    "And besides, if you will I'll show you my sore toe."

    Jim was only human -- this attraction was too much for him. He put down his pail, took
    the white alley, and bent over the toe with absorbing interest while the bandage was being
    unwound. In another moment he was flying down the street with his pail and a tingling
    rear, Tom was whitewashing with vigor, and Aunt Polly was retiring from the field with a
    slipper in her hand and triumph in her eye. But Tom's energy did not last. He began to
    think of the fun he had planned for this day, and his sorrows multiplied. Soon the free
    boys would come tripping along on all sorts of delicious expeditions, and they would make
    a world of fun of him for having to work -- the very thought of it burnt him like fire. He
    got out his worldly wealth and examined it -- bits of toys, marbles, and trash; enough to
    buy an exchange of WORK, maybe, but not half enough to buy so much as half an hour of pure
    freedom. So he returned his straitened means to his pocket, and gave up the idea of trying
    to buy the boys. At this dark and hopeless moment an inspiration burst upon him! Nothing
    less than a great, magnificent inspiration.

    He took up his brush and went tranquilly to work. Ben Rogers hove in sight presently --
    the very boy, of all boys, whose ridicule he had been dreading. Ben's gait was the
    hop-skip-and-jump -- proof enough that his heart was light and his anticipations high. He
    was eating an apple, and giving a long, melodious whoop, at intervals, followed by a
    deep-toned ding-dong-dong, ding-dong-dong, for he was personating a steamboat. As he drew
    near, he slackened speed, took the middle of the street, leaned far over to star-board and
    rounded to ponderously and with laborious pomp and circumstance -- for he was personating
    the Big missouri, and considered himself to be drawing nine feet of water. He was boat and
    captain and engine-bells combined, so he had to imagine himself standing on his own
    hurricane-deck giving the orders and executing them:

    "Stop her, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!" The headway ran almost out, and he drew up
    slowly toward the sidewalk.

    "Ship up to back! Ting-a-ling-ling!" His arms straightened and stiffened down
    his sides.

    "Set her back on the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow! ch-chow-wow! Chow!"
    His right hand, meantime, describing stately circles -- for it was representing a
    forty-foot wheel.

    "Let her go back on the labboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ch-chow-chow!" The
    left hand began to describe circles.

    "Stop the stabboard! Ting-a-ling-ling! Stop the labboard! Come ahead on the
    stabboard! Stop her! Let your outside turn over slow! Ting-a-ling-ling! Chow-ow-ow! Get
    out that head-line! lively now! Come -- out with your spring-line -- what're you about
    there! Take a turn round that stump with the bight of it! Stand by that stage, now -- let
    her go! Done with the engines, sir! Ting-a-ling-ling!"

    "Sh't! s'h't! sh't!" (trying the gauge-cocks).

    Tom went on whitewashing -- paid no attention to the steamboat. Ben stared a moment and
    then said: "Hi-Yi! you're up a stump, ain't you!"

    No answer. Tom surveyed his last touch with the eye of an artist, then he gave his
    brush another gentle sweep and surveyed the result, as before. Ben ranged up alongside of
    him. Tom's mouth watered for the apple, but he stuck to his work. Ben said:

    "Hello, old chap, you got to work, hey?"

    Tom wheeled suddenly and said:

    "Why, it's you, Ben! I warn't noticing."

    "Say -- I'm going in a-swimming, I am. Don't you wish you could? But of course
    you'd druther work -- wouldn't you? Course you would!"

    Tom contemplated the boy a bit, and said:

    "What do you call work?"

    "Why, ain't that work?"

    Tom resumed his whitewashing, and answered carelessly:

    "Well, maybe it is, and maybe it ain't. All I know, is, it suits Tom Sawyer."

    "Oh come, now, you don't mean to let on that you like it?"

    The brush continued to move.

    "Like it? Well, I don't see why I oughtn't to like it. Does a boy get a chance to
    whitewash a fence every day?"

    That put the thing in a new light. Ben stopped nibbling his apple. Tom swept his brush
    daintily back and forth -- stepped back to note the effect -- added a touch here and there
    -- criticised the effect again -- Ben watching every move and getting more and more
    interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

    "Say, Tom, let me whitewash a little."

    Tom considered, was about to consent; but he altered his mind:

    "No -- no -- I reckon it wouldn't hardly do, Ben. You see, Aunt Polly's awful
    particular about this fence -- right here on the street, you know -- but if it was the
    back fence I wouldn't mind and she wouldn't. Yes, she's awful particular about this fence;
    it's got to be done very careful; I reckon there ain't one boy in a thousand, maybe two
    thousand, that can do it the way it's got to be done."

    "No -- is that so? Oh come, now -- lemme just try. Only just a little -- I'd let
    you, if you was me, Tom."

    "Ben, I'd like to, honest injun; but Aunt Polly -- well, Jim wanted to do it, but
    she wouldn't let him; Sid wanted to do it, and she wouldn't let Sid. Now don't you see how
    I'm fixed? If you was to tackle this fence and anything was to happen to it --"

    "Oh, shucks, I'll be just as careful. Now lemme try. Say -- I'll give you the core
    of my apple."

    "Well, here -- No, Ben, now don't. I'm afeard --"

    "I'll give you all of it!"

    Tom gave up the brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart. And while
    the late steamer Big Missouri worked and sweated in the sun, the retired artist sat on a
    barrel in the shade close by, dangled his legs, munched his apple, and planned the
    slaughter of more innocents. There was no lack of material; boys happened along every
    little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged
    out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy Fisher for a kite, in good repair; and when
    he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with -- and
    so on, and so on, hour after hour. And when the middle of the afternoon came, from being a
    poor poverty-stricken boy in the morning, Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He had
    besides the things before mentioned, twelve marbles, part of a jews-harp, a piece of blue
    bottle-glass to look through, a spool cannon, a key that wouldn't unlock anything, a
    fragment of chalk, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six
    fire-crackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog-collar -- but no dog --
    the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange-peel, and a dilapidated old window sash.

    He had had a nice, good, idle time all the while -- plenty of company -- and the fence
    had three coats of whitewash on it! If he hadn't run out of whitewash he would have
    bankrupted every boy in the village.

    Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a
    great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a
    boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had
    been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have
    comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play
    consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand
    why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling
    ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England
    who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the
    summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered
    wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.

    The boy mused awhile over the substantial change which had taken place in his worldly
    circumstances, and then wended toward headquarters to report.