The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

what do the boys do on Examination evening?

chapter 17-22

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They take off the schoolmastesr's wig with fishing line.

"The group decides to act on the day of Examination Evening, knowing that before the event Dobbins would celebrate by drinking.

On the big evening, the town gathers in their best clothes and the exercises begin. Little boys and little girls recite poems and speeches; Tom Sawyer begins with "Give me liberty or give me death," but stops halfway through, unable to remember his lines. There are reading and spelling exercises, a Latin recitation, and then the young ladies present original compositions. Twain describes the compositions as "nursed" and like "petty melancholy." Each piece was a "wasteful and opulent gush" of moralistic and religious teaching. Twain writes: "There is no school in all our land where the young ladies do not feel obliged to close their compositions with a sermon Homely truth is unpalatable."

When the time finally comes for the geography class to perform, Dobbins rises to the blackboard and begins to draw a map of the United States. The "tittering" in the classroom increases, but Dobbins remains confused as to what the snickering is about. Above his head is a cat suspended by her haunches with a rag tied around her mouth to prevent her from mewing. Clawing at the string, she is suspended lower and lower until in her clawing and moving about, she grasps the teacher's wig in her claws. The boys have finally achieved retribution, for the sign-painter's son has gilded the schoolmaster's bald head!"




Chapter 21