something in that. He could drink and swear, now--but found
to his surprise that he did not want to. The simple fact that he could,
took the desire away, and the charm of it.

Tom presently wondered to find that his coveted vacation was beginning
to hang a little heavily on his hands.

He attempted a diary--but nothing happened during three days, and so
he abandoned it.

The first of all the negro minstrel shows came to town, and made a
sensation. Tom and Joe Harper got up a band of performers and were
happy for two days.

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.

A circus came. 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.

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

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.

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 dreadful secret of the murder was a chronic misery. It was a very
cancer for permanency and pain.

Then came the measles.

During two long weeks Tom lay a prisoner, dead to the world and its
happenings. He was very ill, he was interested in nothing. When he got
upon his feet at last and moved feebly down-town, a melancholy change
had come over everything and every creature. There had been a
"revival," and everybody had "got religion," not only the adults, but
even the boys and girls. Tom went about, hoping against hope for the
sight of one blessed sinful face, but disappointment crossed him
everywhere. He found Joe Harper studying a Testament, and turned sadly
away from the depressing spectacle. He sought Ben Rogers, and found him
visiting the poor with a basket of tracts. He hunted up Jim Hollis, who
called his attention to the precious blessing of his late measles as a
warning. Every boy he encountered added another ton to his depression;
and when, in desperation, he flew for refuge at last to the