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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

PREFACE
Most of the adventures recorded in this book really occurred; one or two were experiences of my own, the rest those of boys who were schoolmates of mine. Voice Reading
Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, but not from an individual-he is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom I knew, and therefore belongs to the composite order of architecture. Voice Reading
The odd superstitions touched upon were all prevalent among children and slaves in the West at the period of this story-that is to say, thirty or forty years ago. Voice Reading
Although my book is intended mainly for the entertainment of boys and girls, I hope it will not be shunned by men and women on that account, for part of my plan has been to try to pleasantly remind adults of what they once were themselves, and of how they felt and thought and talked, and what queer enterprises they sometimes engaged in. Voice Reading
THE AUTHOR. Voice Reading
HARTFORD, 1876. Voice Reading
CHAPTER I
No answer. Voice Reading
No answer. Voice Reading
"What's gone with that boy, I wonder? You TOM!" Voice Reading
No answer. Voice Reading
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the room; then she put them up and looked out under them. Voice Reading
She seldom or never looked through them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service-she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. Voice Reading
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear: Voice Reading
"Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll-" Voice Reading
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat. Voice Reading
"I never did see the beat of that boy!" Voice Reading
She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted: Voice Reading
"Y-o-u-u TOM!" Voice Reading
There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. Voice Reading
"There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been doing in there?" Voice Reading

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