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Chapter XXII
TOM joined the new order of Cadets of
Temperance, being attracted by the showy
character of their "regalia."
He promised to abstain from smoking,
chewing, and profanity as long as he
remained a member.
Now he found out a new thing--namely, that
to promise not to do a thing is the surest
way in the world to make a body want to go
and do that very thing.
Tom soon found himself tormented with a
desire to drink and swear; the desire grew
to be so intense that nothing but the hope
of a chance to display himself in his red
sash kept him from withdrawing from the
order.
Fourth of July was coming; but he soon
gave that up --gave it up before he had
worn his shackles over forty-eight hours--
and fixed his hopes upon old Judge Frazer,
justice of the peace, who was apparently
on his deathbed and would have a big
public funeral, since he was so high an
official.
During three days Tom was deeply concerned
about the Judge's condition and hungry for
news of it.
Sometimes his hopes ran high--so high that
he would venture to get out his regalia
and practise before the looking-glass.
But the Judge had a most discouraging way
of fluctuating.
At last he was pronounced upon the mend--
and then convalescent.
Tom was disgusted; and felt a sense of
injury, too.
He handed in his resignation at once--and
that night the Judge suffered a relapse
and died.
Tom resolved that he would never trust a
man like that again.
The funeral was a fine thing.
The Cadets paraded in a style calculated
to kill the late member with envy.
Tom was a free boy again, however --there
was something in that.
He could drink and swear, now--but found
to his surprise that he did not want to.
The simple fact that he could, took the
desire away, and the charm of it.
Tom presently wondered to find that his
coveted vacation was beginning to hang a
little heavily on his hands.
He attempted a diary--but nothing happened
during three days, and so he abandoned it.
The first of all the *** minstrel shows
came to town, and made a sensation.
Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of
performers and were happy for two days.
Even the Glorious Fourth was in some sense
a failure, for it rained hard, there was
no procession in consequence, and the
greatest man in the world (as Tom
supposed), Mr. Benton, an actual United
States Senator, proved an overwhelming
disappointment--for he was not twenty-five
feet high, nor even anywhere in the
neighborhood of it.
A circus came.
The boys played circus for three days
afterward in tents made of rag carpeting--
admission, three pins for boys, two for
girls--and then circusing was abandoned.
A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came--and
went again and left the village duller and
drearier than ever.
There were some boys-and-girls' parties,
but they were so few and so delightful
that they only made the aching voids
between ache the harder.
Becky Thatcher was gone to her
Constantinople home to stay with her
parents during vacation--so there was no
bright side to life anywhere.
The dreadful secret of the *** was a
chronic misery.
It was a very cancer for permanency and
pain.
Then came the measles.
During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner,
dead to the world and its happenings.
He was very ill, he was interested in
nothing.
When he got upon his feet at last and
moved feebly down-town, a melancholy
change had come over everything and every
creature.
There had been a "revival," and everybody
had "got religion," not only the adults,
but even the boys and girls.
Tom went about, hoping against hope for
the sight of one blessed sinful face, but
disappointment crossed him everywhere.
He found Joe Harper studying a Testament,
and turned sadly away from the depressing
spectacle.
He sought Ben Rogers, and found him
visiting the poor with a basket of tracts.
He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his
attention to the precious blessing of his
late measles as a warning.
Every boy he encountered added another ton
to his depression; and when, in
desperation, he flew for refuge at last to
the *** of Huckleberry Finn and was
received with a Scriptural quotation, his
heart broke and he crept home and to bed
realizing that he alone of all the town
was lost, forever and forever.
And that night there came on a terrific
storm, with driving rain, awful claps of
thunder and blinding sheets of lightning.
He covered his head with the bedclothes
and waited in a horror of suspense for his
doom; for he had not the shadow of a doubt
that all this hubbub was about him.
He believed he had taxed the forbearance
of the powers above to the extremity of
endurance and that this was the result.
It might have seemed to him a waste of
pomp and ammunition to kill a bug with a
battery of artillery, but there seemed
nothing incongruous about the getting up
such an expensive thunderstorm as this to
knock the turf from under an insect like
himself.
By and by the tempest spent itself and
died without accomplishing its object.
The boy's first impulse was to be
grateful, and reform.
His second was to wait--for there might
not be any more storms.
The next day the doctors were back; Tom
had relapsed.
The three weeks he spent on his back this
time seemed an entire age.
When he got abroad at last he was hardly
grateful that he had been spared,
remembering how lonely was his estate, how
companionless and forlorn he was.
He drifted listlessly down the street and
found Jim Hollis acting as judge in a
juvenile court that was trying a cat for
***, in the presence of her victim, a
bird.
He found Joe Harper and Huck Finn up an
alley eating a stolen melon.
Poor lads!
they--like Tom--had suffered a relapse.