It is set in the s in the town of St. Petersburg, which is based on Hannibal, Missouri , where Twain lived as a boy. Originally a commercial failure, the book ended up being the best-selling of Twain's works during his lifetime. Petersburg, Missouri , sometime in the s. He frequently skips school to play or go swimming.
When Polly catches him sneaking home late on a Friday evening and discovers that he has been in a fight, she makes him whitewash her fence the next day as punishment.
Tom persuades several neighborhood children to trade him small trinkets and treasures for the "privilege" of doing his work, using reverse psychology to convince them of its enjoyable nature. Later, Tom trades the trinkets with students in his Sunday school class for tickets given out for memorizing verses of Scripture.
He collects enough tickets to earn a prized Bible from the teacher, despite being one of the worst students in the class and knowing almost nothing of Scripture, eliciting envy from the students and a mixture of pride and shock from the adults. Tom falls in love with Becky Thatcher , a girl who is new in town. Tom wins the admiration of her father, the prominent Judge Thatcher, in the church by obtaining the Bible as a prize, but reveals his ignorance when he cannot answer basic questions about Scripture.
Tom pursues Becky, eventually persuading her to get "engaged" by kissing her. Their romance soon collapses when she discovers that Tom was "engaged" to another schoolgirl, Amy Lawrence. Becky spurns Tom, who accompanies Huckleberry Finn , a vagrant boy whom all the other boys admire, to a graveyard at midnight to perform a ritual intended to heal warts. At the graveyard, they witness three body snatchers , Dr. Robinson, Muff Potter and Injun Joe , robbing a grave.
