V.

TOM SAWYER AND HIS BAND

In beginning "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer" the author says, "Most of the
adventures recorded in this book really occurred," and he tells us that
Huck Finn is drawn from life; Tom Sawyer also, though not from a single
individual, being a composite of three boys whom Mark Twain had known.

The three boys were himself, almost entirely, with traces of two
schoolmates, John Briggs and Will Bowen. John Briggs was also the
original of Joe Harper, the "Terror of the Seas." As for Huck Finn, the
"Red-Handed," his original was a village waif named Tom Blankenship, who
needed no change for his part in the story.

The Blankenship family picked up an uncertain livelihood, fishing and
hunting, and lived at first under a tree in a bark shanty, but later
moved into a large, barn-like building, back of the Clemens home on Hill
Street. There were three male members of the household: Old Ben, the
father, shiftless and dissolute; young Ben, the eldest son--a doubtful
character, with certain good traits; and Tom--that is to say, Huck, who
was just as he is described in the book--a ruin of rags, a river-rat,
kind of heart, and accountable for his conduct to nobody in the world.
He could come and go as he chose; he never had to work or go to school;
he could do all the things, good and bad, that other boys longed to do
and were forbidden. To them he was the symbol of liberty; his knowledge
of fishing, trapping, signs, and of the woods and river gave value to his
society, while the fact that it was forbidden made it necessary to Sam
Clemens's happiness.