Except sometimes when, to my absolute joy, Rosely would come upon a book that was just too good to resist and come creeping to my bedside—the day’s fights and squabbles forgotten—and carry me off to some happier, better world.

 

Tom!’
No answer.
“Tom!”
No answer.
“What’s gone with that boy, I wonder? You Tom!”

Need I say more?
    Well, I will. Remember those idiots—the forerunners of the modern politically correct thought police­—wanted to alter all the references to ‘niggers’ in Tom Sawyer and call them negroes, (and when that became unfashionable, Afro-Americans) and then got in a tizz again because Injun Joe put native Americans in a bad light. Gladly, the argument for artistic merit prevailed. Even the zealots had to admit that it was just too wonderful a book to mess with...