MR. DOBBINS, in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and every movie project based on that work, was the schoolmaster of the village school in Hannibal, Missouri while Tom Sawyer lived there. As such he had Tom Sawyer as a pupil, along with Joseph Harper, Benjamin Rogers, Amy Lawrence, Grace Miller, Susan Harper -- and Becky Thatcher, daughter of that Judge Thatcher who took over the village court after Judge Douglas passed away. Mr. Dobbins also knew the reputation of the town drunkard, named Finn, and Finn's son Huckleberry. He boarded at the home of the town's sign painter and had that man's son for a pupil -- to his regret. In fact, that situation provoked an episode that forced him, at last, to confront a problem he had with alcoholism. But he was thankful he did not cross the path of a particularly dangerous denizen of Hannibal: Injun Joe, who murdered the town's only doctor, only to die of starvation in McDougall's Cave. Contents [hideshow] 1.1. Background 1.2. Early Lessons 1.3. The Book-tearing Incident 1.4. Examination Day 1.5. Epilog 1.6. Note But that came much later in his stay in Hannibal, and many adventures happened to him in-between, that he never would have imagined. Still less would he have imagined that Tom Sawyer, one of his least disciplined and distinguished pupils, would end in finding riches beyond his imagining--and with Huckleberry Finn for a partner, to boot!BackgroundDobbins came to Hannibal unwillingly--that is, after his earlier career choice ended in failure. In truth, he had always wanted to become a doctor. He even bought a copy of Gray's Anatomy, which became the possession he prized the most. But he never could find a doctor who would let him read medicine with him. It cost money to do that, and to study medicine properly. Money Dobbins simply did not have.It is also worth mentioning that Dobbins lost his hair early in life. He spent most of his money on a wig to hide it. What little money he had left, he spent on distilled spirits, especially shortly before Examination Day. He drank, quite simply, to cope with the stress of his life, his work, and his failures. But by all accounts, he was still as vigorous as any man with a full head of hair. As many an unruly boy would have occasion to attest. Including, of course, Tom Sawyer.Early LessonsDobbins remembers Tom Sawyer as a typical underachiever. He played truant often, and was usually tardy when he did show up for school. But on the occasion of the arrival of Judge Thatcher and his daughter, Tom Sawyer did the first of many things Dobbins found incredible: when he showed up late for school, he actually confessed he had stopped to talk with Huckleberry Finn! Of course Dobbins flogged him and told him to sit with the girls. Which meant that Tom Sawyer started chatting with Becky Thatcher. Dobbins put an end to that by lifting Tom Sawyer up by the ear and marching him across the room to his usual seat.Then came the time when, instead of applying themselves to penmanship, Tom Sawyer and Joseph Harper chose to play a game involving letting a wood tick crawl across a slate between them and try to confine the tick with pins. Dobbins found out about this when the two started to argue about whether Harper was taking undue advantage. Dobbins whacked both boys on the shoulder at once. That stopped that particular disturbance.The Book-tearing IncidentOne fine day, toward the end of the school year, Dobbins forgot one important part of his routine. Every day, while the pupils were at their exercises, he would take out Gray's Anatomy and read it. At lunch time he would lock it up in his desk and take the key.On this day he forgot and left the key in the lock. But even then he never imagined that any of his pupils would dare take advantage of that, and spy on him, or worse, steal his book.He found out, to his blinding rage, that he was wrong. And how he found out, humiliated him more than the deed itself. After he returned from lunch, took in school, set the pupils to reading, unlocked his desk, and took out Gray's Anatomy to read, he noticed something that made him angry clear through. Some pupil, or pupils, acting with no better consideration for private property than a common garden-variety thief, had violated his desk, opened the volume, and, worse yet, torn the frontispiece of a naked human figure halfway down the middle!. And he now would want to know WHO IT WAS!So he waited for ten seconds, staring at his pupils and gathering his wrath. Then he spoke. Who tore this book? His pupils did not make a sound. He could have heard a pin drop if anyone had been so foolish as to drop a pin in his presence that moment.He looked at the boys. He queried Benjamin Rogers, then Joseph Harper. It never occurred to him to question Tom Sawyer about a thing like this, because Tom Sawyer had never shown the slightest interest in his desk.But a girl--now, maybe a girl would let the male figure captivate her. So he questioned Amy Lawrence, Grace Miller, and Susan Harper, in that order. Then he turned to Becky Thatcher. And he saw at once he had the right target, for she had turned ghost-white. Rebecca Thatcher, he began, noticing idly that her face was fraught with terror. Did you tear--no, look me in the face. She raised her hands in appeal. Did you tear this book? That's when Tom Sawyer surprised him again. This madcap boy sprang to his feet and shouted, I done it! Dobbins barely noticed the amazement on the part of the whole school, and forgot about Becky Thatcher completely. Tom stepped forward to take his punishment, almost with pride! Dobbins, of course, lost control of himself. He delivered the most merciless flaying he had ever administered to any pupil's back, before or since. And Tom Sawyer took that without an outcry. Dobbins then commanded him to remain two hours after school should be dismissed.Dobbins realized shortly afterward that he had made another mistake. For Becky Thatcher actually waited outside for Tom Sawyer to walk out when his captivity was done. Dobbins heard the two of them talking. Tom! she cried out. How could you be so noble! Noble?!? And when she then revealed she had seen another pupil, Alfred Temple, pouring ink on Tom's spelling book during lunch hour that day, an act of vandalism for which he had punished Tom Sawyer earlier, he knew he had completely blown the gaffe. He never corrected his error. He sensed that Tom Sawyer didn't even care.Tom reinforced Dobbins' opinion in the days to come. Dobbins waited to see whether Tom would take revenge against Alfred Temple for framing him with the spelling-book damage. Tom never did.Examination DayAs Examination Day approached that year, Dobbins naturally became more severe and exacting with his pupils with every passing week. His boy pupils started to play petty pranks on him. But of course, he held the rod and the ferrule, and the authority to wield both. And he used them.But he never suspected, when Examination Day arrived and he went home to nap in his favorite chair at the sign-painter's home where he boarded, that the boys would set him up for the worst humiliation of that year. In retrospect, he realized he set himself up for that humiliation. For he drank himself almost to a stupor, and took the nap to sleep most of it off.Examination Evening started innocently enough, with recitations by the boys, then the girls. The trouble started when he tried to draw the map of America for the geography class to focus upon. He had not slept off all his drunk, so that his hand shook as he tried to draw. This forced him to draw, erase, and redraw the shores, provoking laughter in his audience. Little did he know what they were really laughing at!He had never thought about the garret above the street level. Nor about a scuttle in the ceiling leading up to the garret. A hole directly above his head. And so he was totally unprepared when a small kitten came down through the hole, snatched his wig off his head, and then disappeared back into the garret with his wig in her possession!And how his audience howled with laughter after that, and kept pointing to his head. He reached up, touched his head, and brought his fingers before him--and beheld flakes of gilt. The sign-painter's boy must have gilded his head while he napped in his chair that afternoon!That evening he packed his bags and moved out. He did not feel he could ever stay at that sign-painter's house again.What other accommodation he found in town, Tom Sawyer's faithful chronicler, Samuel L. Clemens, never mentions. Doubtless Judge Thatcher and the Widow Douglas prevailed upon him at least not to give up his teaching appointment because a few schoolboys decided to be inventive with their pranks. The astute judge might even have divined that Dobbins had been drinking the afternoon before--to explain his difficulties in map-drawing--and gently but firmly encouraged him to face his drinking problem at last.Epilog Dobbins stayed in Hannibal long enough to watch the trial of People of the State of Missouri v. Muff Potter, the evidence Tom Sawyer gave of what really happened to Doctor Robinson, and the escape of Injun Joe. And he was also present when Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher got lost in McDougall's Cave after the town's Independence Day picnic, their eventual escape, the discovery of Injun Joe dead at the now-sealed door to the cave, and then the announcement that Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn had found twenty-four thousand dollars' worth of gold coin, which they split two ways between them.Note The original work gives only the name of the anatomy work, Anatomy, by a Professor Somebody. Henry Gray first published his work, titled Anatomy, in 1858. This might be an anachronism. Sam Clemens' Adventures of Huckleberry Finn gives the period of that story as some forty years before the date of publication, which was 1882. That would put that story at 1841, and the earlier Tom Sawyer before then. There is no reason to suppose that Sam Clemens researched the history of textbooks of human anatomy published in English before 1858. The closest such title would have been a posthumous edition of a work by Samuel Thomas von S Show less «