Yes, Tom’s blemishless week had restored him
to the favor of his aunt and uncle.
His mother was satisfied with him, too. Privately,
she believed she was coming to love him, but she did
not say so. She told him to go along to St. Louis
now, and she would get ready and follow. Then
she smashed her whisky bottle and said:
“Dah now! I’s a-gwine to make you
walk as straight as a string, Chambers, en so I’s
bown, you ain’t gwine to git no bad example out
o’ yo’ mammy. I tole you you couldn’t
go into no bad comp’ny. Well, you’s
gwine into my comp’ny, en I’s gwine to
fill de bill. Now, den, trot along, trot along!”
Tom went aboard one of the big transient boats that
night with his heavy satchel of miscellaneous plunder,
and slept the sleep of the unjust, which is serener
and sounder than the other kind, as we know by the
hanging-eve history of a million rascals. But
when he got up in the morning, luck was against him
again: a brother thief had robbed him while he
slept, and gone ashore at some intermediate landing.
If you pick up a
starving dog and make him prosperous, he
will not bite you.
This is the principal difference between
a dog and a man.
—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar
We all know about the habits of
the ant, we know all about the habits of the
bee, but we know nothing at all about the habits
of the oyster. It seems almost certain that we
have been choosing the wrong time for studying
the oyster. — Pudd’nhead
Wilson’s Calendar
When Roxana arrived, she found her son in such despair
and misery that her heart was touched and her motherhood
rose up strong in her. He was ruined past hope
now; his destruction would be immediate and sure, and
he would be an outcast and friendless. That was
reason enough for a mother to love a child; so she
loved him, and told him so. It made him wince,
secretly—for she was a “nigger.”
That he was one himself was far from reconciling him
to that despised race.
Roxana poured out endearments upon him, to which he
responded uncomfortably, but as well as he could.
And she tried to comfort him, but that was not possible.
These intimacies quickly became horrible to him, and
within the hour he began to try to get up courage enough
to tell her so, and require that they be discontinued
or very considerably modified. But he was afraid
of her; and besides, there came a lull now, for she
had begun to think. She was trying to invent
a saving plan. Finally she started up, and said
she had found a way out. Tom was almost suffocated
by the joy of this sudden good news. Roxana said:
“Here is de plan, en she’ll win, sure.
I’s a nigger, en nobody ain’t gwine to
doubt it dat hears me talk. I’s wuth six
hund’d dollahs. Take en sell me, en pay
off dese gamblers.”
Tom was dazed. He was not sure he had heard aright.
He was dumb for a moment; then he said:
