An Agony of Pleasurable Suffering

I'm continuing my slow enjoyment of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. This chapter is best savored slowly. Twain explains the triumphs and sorrows of a boy. I suspect he remembered much of this from his own childhood...with appropriate embellishment. I'm sure that I appreciate his description much more now than I did when I was a kid. We get to see Tom as a martyr, or when he believes himself to be a martyr.

Chapter 3 follows Tom's immediate success in the field of graft and corruption (completing the whitewash job). He presents himself to Polly. As one might suspect, she is skeptical...and very surprised. She is so surprised at his successful completion of the task that she gives him a choice apple, and a lecture on the added value of a treat earned through virtuous effort. Tom steals a doughnut as Polly ends the lecture. As he makes his escape, Tom pelts Sid with a hail of dirt clods for getting him in trouble the night before.

He is off. We have a final triumph to witness before a crucial event in Tom's life.

Tom finds his friend Joe Harper, the opposing general, in the public square. Each of the two has an army of boys that they pit against one another. Tom's force wins the victory after a hard-fought battle, and they agree upon the terms for the next disagreement. Tom heads toward home, flush with a day of victories. Pride goeth before a fall. 

A lovely little blue-eyed creature with yellow hair, wearing a summer frock, fells him without firing a shot. He immediately forgets the girl with whom he had imagined that he was in love. He begins his courtship by absurd boyish stunts, including sorts of gymnastics. They don't exchange words, or even a direct glance, but she tosses a flower over the fence. Tom works his way around, balancing a straw upon his nose, until he can pick up the flower with his toes. Once out of sight, he places the flower inside his shirt before returning to hang around the fence "showing off" until nightfall. 

Back at home, nothing bothers Tom, not even a rap across the knuckles from Polly when he tries to steal sugar. It is only when Sid breaks the sugar bowl, and Polly smacks Tom for it, that he sulks. I can't help but wonder if Jean Shepherd wasn't influenced in his A Christmas Story's description of Ralphie (dreaming of his parents' sorrow for blinding him by making him hold soap in his mouth) by Twain's description of Tom sulking as the martyr. Tom "exalted in his woes. He knew that in her heart his aunt was on her knees to him, and he was morosely gratified by the consciousness of it." He pictured himself sick and dying, his aunt looking for a single word of forgiveness, and he turning away to die. He continued to dwell upon the thought, picturing himself brought home from the river dead, a poor wet corpse, his suffering over. He so enjoyed this "petting of his sorrows" that he left when his cousin Mary came in full of joy and sunshine. 

Tom wanders. He remembers the flower and gets it out. "[I]t mightily increased his dismal felicity." He begins to wonder if "she" would pity and comfort him if she knew. Finally, he wanders to her house and lies beneath a second story window where he can see a lit candle. He lies there, nursing his woe like Achilles in his tent...until a maid-servant opens the window and drenches him with water. 

Back home, Tom turned in "without the vexation of prayers."