Multimedia Mania/abacus-multimedia-mania.iso/dp/0142/01424.txt

Text File | 1993-07-27 | 10KB | 169 lines

$Unique_ID{bob01424}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{Prince And The Pauper, The
Chapter II}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Twain, Mark}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{tom
day
night
tom's
father
upon
life
prince
time
court}
$Date{1909}
$Log{}
Title:       Prince And The Pauper, The
Author:      Twain, Mark
Date:        1909

Chapter II

Tom's Early Life

     Let us skip a number of years.

     London was fifteen hundred years old, and was a great town - for that
day.  It had a hundred thousand inhabitants - some think double as many. The
streets were very narrow, and crooked, and dirty, especially in the part where
Tom Canty lived, which was not far from London Bridge.  The houses were of
wood, with the second story projecting over the first, and the third sticking
its elbows out beyond the second.  The higher the houses grew, the broader
they grew.  They were skeletons of strong criss-cross beams, with solid
material between, coated with plaster.  The beams were painted red or blue or
black, according to the owner's taste, and this gave the houses a very
picturesque look.  The windows were small, glazed with little diamond-shaped
panes, and they opened outward, on hinges, like doors.

     The house which Tom's father lived in was up a foul little pocket called
Offal Court, out of Pudding Lane.  It was small, decayed, and rickety, but it
was packed full of wretchedly poor families.  Canty's tribe occupied a room on
the third floor.  The mother and father had a sort of bedstead in the corner;
but Tom, his grandmother, and his two sisters, Bet and Nan, were not
restricted - they had all the floor to themselves, and might sleep where they
chose.  There were the remains of a blanket or two, and some bundles of
ancient and dirty straw, but these could not rightly be called beds, for they
were not organized; they were kicked into a general pile mornings, and
selections made from the mass at night, for service.

     Bet and Nan were fifteen years old - twins.  They were good-hearted
girls, unclean, clothed in rags, and profoundly ignorant.  Their mother was
like them.  But the father and the grandmother were a couple of fiends. They
got drunk whenever they could; then they fought each other or anybody else who
came in the way; they cursed and swore always, drunk or sober; John Canty was
a thief, and his mother a beggar.  They made beggars of the children, but
failed to make thieves of them.  Among, but not of, the dreadful rabble that
inhabited the house, was a good old priest whom the king had turned out of
house and home with a pension of a few farthings, and he used to get the
children aside and teach them right ways secretly. Father Andrew also taught
Tom a little Latin, and how to read and write; and would have done the same
with the girls, but they were afraid of the jeers of their friends, who could
not have endured such a queer accomplishment in them.

     All Offal Court was just such another hive as Canty's house. Drunkenness,
riot, and brawling were the order there, every night and nearly all night
long.  Broken heads were as common as hunger in that place.  Yet little Tom
was not unhappy.  He had a hard time of it, but did not know it.  It was the
sort of time that all the Offal Court boys had, therefore he supposed it was
the correct and comfortable thing.  When he came home empty-handed at night,
he knew his father would curse him and thrash him first, and that when he was
done the awful grandmother would do it all over again and improve on it; and
that away in the night his starving mother would slip to him stealthily with
any miserable scrap or crust she had been able to save for him by going hungry
herself, notwithstanding she was often caught in that sort of treason and
soundly beaten for it by her husband.

     No, Tom's life went along well enough, especially in summer.  He only
begged just enough to save himself, for the laws against mendicancy were
stringent, and the penalties heavy; so he put in a good deal of his time
listening to good Father Andrew's charming old tales and legends about giants
and fairies, dwarfs and genii, and enchanted castles, and gorgeous kings and
princes.  His head grew to be full of these wonderful things, and many a night
as he lay in the dark on his scant and offensive straw, tired, hungry, and
smarting from a thrashing, he unleashed his imagination and soon forgot his
aches and pains in delicious picturings to himself of the charmed life of a
petted prince in a regal palace.  One desire came in time to haunt him day and
night; it was to see a real prince, with his own eyes. He spoke of it once to
some of his Offal Court comrades; but they jeered him and scoffed him so
unmercifully that he was glad to keep his dream to himself after that.

     He often read the priest's old books and got him to explain and enlarge
upon them.  His dreamings and readings worked certain changes in him by and
by.  His dream-people were so fine that he grew to lament his shabby clothing
and his dirt, and to wish to be clean and better clad.  He went on playing in
the mud just the same, and enjoying it, too; but instead of splashing around
in the Thames solely for the fun of it, he began to find an added value in it
because of the washings and cleansings it afforded.

     Tom could always find something going on around the Maypole in Cheapside,
and at the fairs; and now and then he and the rest of London had a chance to
see a military parade when some famous unfortunate was carried prisoner to the
Tower, by land or boat.  One summer's day he saw poor Anne Askew and three men
burned at the stake in Smithfield, and heard an ex- bishop preach a sermon to
them which did not interest him.  Yes, Tom's life was varied and pleasant
enough, on the whole.

     By and by Tom's reading and dreaming about princely life wrought such a
strong effect upon him that he began to act the prince, unconsciously. His
speech and manners became curiously ceremonious and courtly, to the vast
admiration and amusement of his intimates.  But Tom's influence among these
young people began to grow now, day by day; and in time he came to be looked
up to by them with a sort of wondering awe, as a superior being.  He seemed to
know so much!  and he could do and say such marvelous things! and withal, he
was so deep and wise!  Tom's remarks and Tom's performances were reported by
the boys to their elders; and these, also, presently began to discuss Tom
Canty, and to regard him as a most gifted and extraordinary creature.
Full-grown people brought their perplexities to Tom for solution, and were
often astonished at the wit and wisdom of his decisions. In fact, he was
become a hero to all who knew him except his own family - these only saw
nothing in him.

     Privately, after a while, Tom organized a royal court!  He was the
prince; his special comrades were guards, chamberlains, equerries, lords and
ladies in waiting, and the royal family.  Daily the mock prince was received
with elaborate ceremonials borrowed by Tom from his romantic readings; daily
the great affairs of the mimic kingdom were discussed in the royal council,
and daily his mimic highness issued decrees to his imaginary armies, navies,
and viceroyalties.

     After which he would go forth in his rags and beg a few farthings, eat
his poor crust, take his customary cuffs and abuse, and then stretch himself
upon his handful of foul straw, and resume his empty grandeurs in his dreams.

     And still his desire to look just once upon a real prince, in the flesh,
grew upon him, day by day, and week by week, until at last it absorbed all
other desires, and became the one passion of his life.

     One January day, on his usual begging tour, he tramped despondently up
and down the region round about Mincing Lane and Little East Cheap, hour after
hour, barefooted and cold, looking in at cookshop windows and longing for the
dreadful pork-pies and other deadly inventions displayed there - for to him
these were dainties fit for the angels; that is, judging by the smell, they
were - for it had never been his good luck to own and eat one. There was a
cold drizzle of rain; the atmosphere was murky; it was a melancholy day.  At
night Tom reached home so wet and tired and hungry that it was not possible
for his father and grandmother to observe his forlorn condition and not be
moved - after their fashion; wherefore they gave him a brisk cuffing at once
and sent him to bed.  For a long time his pain and hunger, and the swearing
and fighting going on in the building, kept him awake; but at last his
thoughts drifted away to far, romantic lands, and he fell asleep in the
company of jeweled and gilded princelings who lived in vast palaces, and had
servants salaaming before them or flying to execute their orders.  And then,
as usual, he dreamed that he was a princeling himself.

     All night long the glories of his royal estate shone upon him; he moved
among great lords and ladies, in a blaze of light, breathing perfumes,
drinking in delicious music, and answering the reverent obeisances of the
glittering throng as it parted to make way for him, with here a smile, and
there a nod of his princely head.

     And when he awoke in the morning and looked upon the wretchedness about
him, his dream had had its usual effect - it had intensified the sordidness of
his surroundings a thousand fold.  Then came bitterness, and heart-break, and
tears.