Nascent Drama

[The Dork Lord]

The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a sensation.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were happy for two days.

 

[The Dork Lord]

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.

 

[The Dork Lord]

A circus came.

 

[The Dork Lord]

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.

 

[The Dork Lord]

A phrenologist and a mesmerizer came -- and went again and left the village duller and drearier than ever.

 

[The Dork Lord]

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.

 

[The Dork Lord]

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 Dork Lord]

The dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery.

 

[The Dork Lord]

It was a very cancer for permanency and pain.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Then came the measles.

 

[The Dork Lord]

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its happenings.

 

[The Dork Lord]

He was very ill, he was interested in nothing.

 

[The Dork Lord]

When he got upon his feet at last and moved feebly down-town, a melancholy change had come over everything and every creature.

 

[The Dork Lord]

There had been a "revival," and everybody had "got religion," not only the adults, but even the boys and girls.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Tom went about, hoping against hope for the sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him everywhere.

 

[The Dork Lord]

He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly away from the depressing spectacle.

 

[The Dork Lord]

He sought Ben Rogers, and found him visiting the poor with a basket of tracts.

 

[The Dork Lord]

He hunted up Jim Hollis, who called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a warning.

 

[The Dork Lord]

Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression; and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the bosom 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.