Lessons on Delegation from Tom Sawyer

Owing to some late night escapades on a Friday night, Tom Sawyer’s mother ensured that his Saturday would involve a day of hard laborious punishment for Tom Sawyer.

Whitewashing the fence was a far cry from the excitement that was possibly being had by Tom’s friends and Tom Sawyer wanted to get out of this chore quickly. Looking at his worldly possessions of a few bits of toys, marbles and some trash: prospects for buying his way out of it by bribing some other boys to share his task seemed bleak.

Then it struck Tom. Ben Roger’s taunts about Tom rather working seemed to brush right off him:

Ben: “Say, I’m going in a swimming, I am. Don’t you wish you could? But of course, you’d druther work, wouldn’t you? Course you would! … Come now, you don’t mean to let on that you like it?”

Tom: “Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?”

Ben stopped nibbling his apple.

Tom swept his brush daintily back and forth — stepped back to notice the effect — added a touch here and there — criticized the effect again, Ben watched every move, and getting more and more interested, more and more absorbed. Presently he said:

Ben: “Say Tom. Let me whitewash a while.”

Tom considered.

Ben: “… oh come now; lemme just try, only just a little. I’d let you, if you was me, Tom”

Tom gave up his brush with reluctance in his face, but alacrity in his heart.

The retired artist sat on a barrel in the shade close by and munched on an apple. Boys happened along every little while; they came to jeer, but remained to whitewash. By the time Ben was fagged out, Tom had traded the next chance to Billy fisher for a kite in good repair; and when he played out, Johnny Miller bought in for a dead rat and a string to swing it with; and so on.

When the middle of afternoon came, from being a poor poverty stricken boy in the morning Tom was literally rolling in wealth. He’d amassed twelve marbles, part of a Jew’s harp, a blue piece of bottle glass, a spool-cannon, a key that wouldn’t unlock anything, a glass stopper of a decanter, a tin soldier, a couple of tadpoles, six firecrackers, a kitten with only one eye, a brass doorknob, a dog collar, the handle of a knife, four pieces of orange peel and a dilapidated old window-sash.

… and the fence had three coats of whitewash on it.

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