CHAPTER FOUR

Sunday Classes at the Church

The sun rose over a quiet world and looked warmly down upon the peaceful village. That morning, all of the families began their day by praying together. After saying his morning prayers with his family, Tom studied the Bible, because today he had to go to Sunday school. Tom was trying to remember five of the shortest sentences in the book, so he could say them in class. And, with help from Aunt Polly's daughter, Mary, he soon learned them. After this, she helped him to put on his nice Sunday clothes. He was disappointed that she made him wear shoes. He hated shoes. And he hated his church lessons, but Mary and Sid loved them.

When he came to the church entrance, he saw a friend there and asked him: "Billy, do you have a yellow ticket?"

"Yes."

"I'll buy it from you."

"How much will you pay?"

Billy accepted Tom's offer and gave him the ticket. And for the next ten minutes Tom bought more and more tickets, some blue, some red, from other boys he met at the door. Children were given tickets for learning Bible sentences. Blue meant that two sentences had been learned, red meant twenty, and yellow meant 200. If a student had ten yellow tickets, he would win a Bible. It was a great honor to win this. Although Tom didn't really care about having a new Bible, he loved the idea of being the only student to get it.

At the beginning of class the teacher told the children to be good, sit up straight, and listen carefully. Tom noticed three men and a woman enter the classroom while the teacher was talking. The woman had a child with her. It was the new girl whom he had seen the other day. He wanted her to see him, so he started to hit and play with his friends sitting near him.

The teacher asked the five new people to come to the front of the class and then introduced them to the students. Everyone knew the first man, Mr Thatcher, because he was from the same village, but the other gentleman was his brother, Judge Thatcher. He had just moved to this village with his family and he was a very interesting man who had traveled to many different parts of the world.

That day, in order to impress Judge Thatcher, the teacher hoped a student would come to class with ten yellow tickets. But, of course, this was not something that happened often. He didn't really expect this to happen; he just hoped he might be lucky. Looking around the room, he saw that none of the students had enough tickets. He became disappointed. But then Tom Sawyer approached him holding nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets, and ten blue tickets. The teacher's dream had come true! And it was even more surprising that it was Tom Sawyer who had them. He never expected Tom to learn more than 10 sentences in his whole life.

The boys who had sold their tickets to Tom felt terribly jealous now. They wished they had kept them. They had been tricked by Tom so many times that the only thing they could feel now was anger.

Tom felt proud standing next to the Judge. He was also very nervous, not because the Judge was a great man, but because he was the father of that beautiful blue-eyed and yellow-haired girl.

The Judge then spoke to him: "What's your name, son?"

"Tom."

"But don't you have another name? A last name?"

"Tell the gentleman your full name, Thomas," said the teacher.

"Thomas Sawyer."

"You must be a fine young man for learning so many sentences. Those sentences will be useful for you for the rest of your life. By learning more and more, you'll one day become a great man, son. And then you can remember this day and you'll be so happy that you attended your church lessons. Now, Thomas, share with us some of things you've learned from your study of the Bible. For instance, tell us the names of the first two followers of Jesus Christ."

Tom suddenly became frightened and embarrassed. He looked at his feet.

The teacher knew that Tom had not really learned all of those sentences, but asked Tom to answer the Judge's question anyway.

"Answer the gentleman, Thomas. Don't be afraid."

Tom remained silent.

"You can tell me," said the lady. "The names of the first two followers of Jesus Christ were—"

Tom thought of two names from the book. He wasn't sure who they were or what they had done, but he knew that they were very popular names and that the names always appeared together:

"DAVID AND GOLIATH!"

This, of course, was terribly wrong, because, although David and Goliath were from the Bible, they hadn't been followers of Jesus Christ. David was a young boy and Goliath was a huge man of very great size and strength. But when they fought, even though David was much smaller, he managed to kill Goliath.

Let us move on to the next part of the story, in order to save Tom from further embarrassment.

(end of section)