TOM SAWYER.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 23, 12 September 1911, Page 7

TOM SAWYER.

fii connection with a cable“message received last week, a contemporary says that one does not know whether Mark Twain’s old house in Hannibal, which has been bought and presented to the town by an admirer of the humourist;, is as it was when he lived in it, but ono would like to think that the fence which Tom Sawyer’s young friends whitewashed, din.ng a livelong summer day, still stands as testimany to the truth of the story that gives it fame. Torn, it will lie remembered, learned on that .occasion the valuable lesson that one way to make a thing eminently desirable is to make it a privilege for a favoured few. Sot by tho remorseless Aunt Mary to whitewash the fence, Tom was first the target for jeers of schoolmates bent on “going in swimming” or passing tho suinnici hours in some much pleasanter way than whitewashing. His assumption of loving absorption in his work, his refusal to listen—at first—to suggestions that ho might lot them wield the brush for a moment, led quite naturally to Tom graciously, and ns a lingo favour, acceding to his . i lends’ wisnes. xi.c-u wo. see him lying in the shade while boy after boy toils at the whitewashing, after paying in marbles, apples, and other treasures for permission to do work which they would have rim a mile t_ escape if it had boon offered to thorn as work, and not as a high and exclusive privilege.