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161 " to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight. "
― Mark Twain , The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
162 " seeing "
163 " This nightmare occupied some ten pages of manuscript and wound up with a sermon so destructive of all hope to non-Presbyterians that it took the first prize. This composition was considered to be the very finest effort of the evening. The mayor of the village, in delivering the prize to the author of it, made a warm speech in which he said that it was by far the most "eloquent" thing he had ever listened to, and that Daniel Webster himself might well be proud of it. "
164 " Tom se dijo que, después de todo, el mundo no era tan malo como parecía. Había descubierto, sin darse cuenta, una gran ley que rige los actos humanos, a saber: que para que un hombre o un muchacho codicie algo, basta con hacer que le sea difícil alcanzarlo. "
165 " SATURDAY morning was come, and all the summer world was bright and fresh, "
166 " 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. She looked perplexed "
167 " implore him to be a merciful ass and trample his duty under foot. "
168 " ahead "
169 " men's misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. This "
170 " The simple fact that he could, took the desire away, and the charm of it "
171 " Company would be a palpable improvement "
172 " Qué apacible debía de ser, pensó, yacer y dormir y sonar por siempre jamás, con el viento murmurando por entre los árboles y meciendo las flores y las hierbas de la tumba, y no tener ya nunca molestias ni dolores que sufrir. "
173 " Not because his troubles were one whit less heavy and bitter to him than a man’s are to a man, but because a new and powerful interest bore them down and drove them out of his mind for the time—just as men’s misfortunes are forgotten in the excitement of new enterprises. "
174 " Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it—namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And "
175 " and it lay just far enough away to seem a Delectable Land, dreamy, reposeful, and inviting. Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine "
176 " It seemed glorious sport to be feasting in that wild, free way in the virgin forest of an unexplored and uninhabited island, "
177 " If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is OBLIGED to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. "
178 " Ting "
179 " Tom Sawyer stepped forward with conceited confidence and soared into the unquenchable and indestructible “Give me liberty or give me death” speech, with fine fury and frantic gesticulation, and broke down in the middle of it. A ghastly stage fright seized him, his legs quaked under him and he was like to choke. True, he had the manifest sympathy of the house—but he had the house’s silence, too, which was even worse than its sympathy. The master frowned, and this completed the disaster. Tom struggled a while and then retired, utterly defeated. "
180 " builded by the water-drip from a stalactite "