Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy

202
Interpretation
with nine yellow tickets, nine red tickets,
and ten blue
ones."
We are
assured that the superintendent had not expected "an application from
this source for the next ten
good for their face,"
Judge and the other
with
envy,"
realize that "they
splendor by trading
years."
But the "certified checks . . . were
and "Tom was therefore elevated to a place with the
elect."
Too late did the other boys, their vitals "eaten
themselves had contributed to this hated
tickets to Tom for the wealth he had amassed in
seUing whitewashing privUeges. These despised themselves, as being the
grass."
dupes of a wily fraud, a guUeful snake in the Or perhaps we should
say that, like Esau, they found out too late that they had sold their
inheritance for a mess of pottage. Certainly Tom here fits the role of the
crafty Jacob,
the Lord.
and hke him wiU vindicate his character as one chosen of
Tom has repeated upon a grander scale the miracle of the fence. As
before he had used the labor of the boys, gaining the credit for it himself,
so now he has utilized their labor in memorizing Bible verses. In doing so,
Tom again demonstrates his superiority. He displays that ""rational and
industrious"
soul that, by its prosperity in this world,
came to be regarded
and therefore a proper witness of the true faith. Tom
as the elect of God,
has already shown himself an artisan of belief, when he led the boys to
credit something directly opposite to what they had previously supposed
to be true. Of the many successors of Ben Rogers, the author had said that
"they came to jeer, but remained to
whitewash."
This paraphrases a
familiar line in Goldsmith's The Deserted Village, "And fools,
who came to
pray,"
scoff, remained to spoken of a gifted divine in a village church.
Although Tom's mental stomach may never have hungered for the prize
Bible itself,
yet he had the vision to see a good connected with its pos
session that the others who presumably knew its contents better than
he lacked. Moreover they lacked his entrepreneurial genius, which saw
that the assembling of the scattered efforts of many could create a new,
capital asset, as distinct from the consumption goods with which he entered
the market. Whereas the others sell the testimonials of their faith, he
buys them. We see that it is not mere love of ease that drove him to
escape work, or an appetite for goods that led him to seU whitewashing
privileges. Nor is it love of glory or eclat alone, great as that is, that
motivates him now. He displays a shrewdness that transcends these un
doubted motives when he exchanges his newly
acquired liquid assets for
the far more durable capital of a churchly reputation. Tom is acquiring
credit with the world, a world represented by the vast dignity of Judge
Thatcher who is, besides all else, her father.
Tom's aspiration for the prize Bible may have had little to do with the
contents of that book. Or perhaps we should say that it had little to do with
such contents, as understood by the old Protestant orthodoxy, if a protest
ing orthodoxy
Judge, "his tongue was tied, his breath would hardly
be not a contradiction. As Tom was introduced to the
come .... He
would have liked to fall down and worship him, if it were in the dark."