Proofed and corrected from the original edition for enjoyable reading. (Worth every penny spent!)
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Mark Twain's style of writing is distinctively an American growth. His humor is of a kind which seldom provokes a hearty laugh, but which generally has a pleasantly irritant effect, like a sharp sauce. It has a dash of cynicism in it, and sometimes approaches, if it does not pass, the limits of reverence for things sacred by association. It seeks expression by means of realistic description, based upon keen observation. It sometimes offends us by revealing a sort of self-conscious cleverness and superiority. It aims at exposing, ridiculing, and destroying mere conventionalities, sentimentalisms, and shams, and in this endeavor is not always directed by a sound discrimination.
In the "Adventures of Tom Sawyer," our author has chosen a field well suited for the exercise of his particular gifts. He presents us with a picture of American boy-life, in a village in the West, some thirty or forty years ago. In the preface, we are told that most of the adventures recorded in the book really occurred, one or two having been experiences of the author's own, the rest having happened to boys who were his schoolmates, and that "Tom Sawyer," is a combination of the characteristics of three boys whom the author knew. With this assurance of the verisimilitude of the sketches of character and conduct before us, we turn to them with interest and zest; and our general impression is, that the American boys of the period referred to were most troublesome, enterprising, adventurous, and superstitious young rascals, and that a village in the West afforded them a peculiarly favourable sphere for the development of these qualities. Moreover, if the description of the schoolmaster be from the life, and so to some extent typical, the belief in the efficacy of the cane as an instrument in youthful training was not only implicit, but, in its manifestation, appalling.
According to a modern fashion, which is, we suppose, a natural reaction from that of our fathers and mothers, the history of Tom Sawyer exhibits by no means "the good boy," of faultless mien and subdued behavior, who used to be held up as an example to the youth of an earlier generation. The days of simplicity, when men believed in the "industrious apprentice," with his smooth hair, clean face, prim, neat appearance, and deferential manners, and in the "idle apprentice" who bore the stamp of future infamy upon his youthful aspect, are over. The modern novelist is not satisfied with so obvious an exemplification of the proverb about the child being father to the man. He rejoices rather to show that sound qualities exist in connection with unpromising exteriors, and to astonish the reader by making the boy who, according to the old style, ought to be a scamp, turn out a very fine fellow. Moreover, he does not forget to submit the companion picture to the same process. The good boy who gives no trouble, whose conduct is the pink of propriety, and whose hands, clothes, and general appearance are the delight of maiden aunts and the hope of an affectionate mother, is exhibited as a mean, double-faced young coward, and generally gets a sound "licking" from the hero in the course of the story. There is something in this, we readily admit. And this mode of treatment serves a good purpose, especially
so far as it teaches parents and others to distinguish between conduct in boys and girls which is really wrong, and that which is but the outflow of youthful exuberance of spirit, or at worst of a not unpardonable thoughtlessness, and conduct which springs from the deliberate adoption of false principles and violation of true ones.
