{"id":"01KG2TSH2FRD3DWF5Y2WJ1WP2H","cid":"bafkreigugvawzm6uihrleionpxzid3zgbvx2naszaedvej7hq3fbbbfxye","type":"chunk","properties":{"end_line":3588,"extracted_at":"2026-01-28T17:35:34.197Z","extracted_by":"structure-extraction-lambda","label":"Chunk 1","source_file":"01KG2T4RHC4E1XKJ12BJRXE8E8","start_line":3529,"text":"CHAPTER XII\r\n\r\n\r\nOne of the reasons why Tom’s mind had drifted away from its secret\r\ntroubles was, that it had found a new and weighty matter to interest\r\nitself about. Becky Thatcher had stopped coming to school. Tom had\r\nstruggled with his pride a few days, and tried to “whistle her down the\r\nwind,” but failed. He began to find himself hanging around her father’s\r\nhouse, nights, and feeling very miserable. She was ill. What if she\r\nshould die! There was distraction in the thought. He no longer took an\r\ninterest in war, nor even in piracy. The charm of life was gone; there\r\nwas nothing but dreariness left. He put his hoop away, and his bat;\r\nthere was no joy in them any more. His aunt was concerned. She began to\r\ntry all manner of remedies on him. She was one of those people who\r\nare infatuated with patent medicines and all new-fangled methods of\r\nproducing health or mending it. She was an inveterate experimenter in\r\nthese things. When something fresh in this line came out she was in a\r\nfever, right away, to try it; not on herself, for she was never ailing,\r\nbut on anybody else that came handy. She was a subscriber for all the\r\n“Health” periodicals and phrenological frauds; and the solemn ignorance\r\nthey were inflated with was breath to her nostrils. All the “rot” they\r\ncontained about ventilation, and how to go to bed, and how to get up,\r\nand what to eat, and what to drink, and how much exercise to take, and\r\nwhat frame of mind to keep one’s self in, and what sort of clothing\r\nto wear, was all gospel to her, and she never observed that her\r\nhealth-journals of the current month customarily upset everything they\r\nhad recommended the month before. She was as simple-hearted and honest\r\nas the day was long, and so she was an easy victim. She gathered\r\ntogether her quack periodicals and her quack medicines, and thus armed\r\nwith death, went about on her pale horse, metaphorically speaking, with\r\n“hell following after.” But she never suspected that she was not an\r\nangel of healing and the balm of Gilead in disguise, to the suffering\r\nneighbors.\r\n\r\nThe water treatment was new, now, and Tom’s low condition was a windfall\r\nto her. She had him out at daylight every morning, stood him up in the\r\nwood-shed and drowned him with a deluge of cold water; then she scrubbed\r\nhim down with a towel like a file, and so brought him to; then she\r\nrolled him up in a wet sheet and put him away under blankets till she\r\nsweated his soul clean and “the yellow stains of it came through his\r\npores”—as Tom said.\r\n\r\nYet notwithstanding all this, the boy grew more and more melancholy and\r\npale and dejected. She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and\r\nplunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the\r\nwater with a slim oatmeal diet and blister-plasters. She calculated his\r\ncapacity as she would a jug’s, and filled him up every day with quack\r\ncure-alls.\r\n\r\nTom had become indifferent to persecution by this time. This phase\r\nfilled the old lady’s heart with consternation. This indifference must\r\nbe broken up at any cost. Now she heard of Pain-killer for the first\r\ntime. She ordered a lot at once. She tasted it and was filled with\r\ngratitude. It was simply fire in a liquid form. She dropped the water\r\ntreatment and everything else, and pinned her faith to Pain-killer.\r\nShe gave Tom a teaspoonful and watched with the deepest anxiety for the\r\nresult. Her troubles were instantly at rest, her soul at peace again;\r\nfor the “indifference” was broken up. The boy could not have shown a\r\nwilder, heartier interest, if she had built a fire under him.\r\n\r","title":"Chunk 1"},"relationships":[{"peer":"01KG2TRB6NZZGV5DCM0YW0XHSB","peer_label":"CHAPTER XII","peer_type":"chapter","predicate":"in"},{"peer":"01KG2T4RHC4E1XKJ12BJRXE8E8","peer_label":"tom_sawyer.txt","peer_type":"file","predicate":"extractedFrom"},{"peer":"01KG2T49K0H5GDRB0G4YDTPG8H","peer_label":"Test Collection","peer_type":"collection","predicate":"collection"},{"peer":"01KG2TSH63GR9GDNBHD5KZSD08","peer_label":"Chunk 2","peer_type":"chunk","predicate":"next"}],"ver":2,"created_at":"2026-01-28T17:35:34.647Z","ts":"2026-01-28T17:35:35.604Z","edited_by":{"method":"manual","user_id":"01KFF0H3YRP9ZSM033AM0QJ47H"}}