ABSTRACT
If people want to break the rules, the trouble is not necessarily with the people; it may be with the rules. Tom Sawyer is a won derful example of a boy who had fun being bad. Most of the restric tions which he ran into no longer exist. Today schools and homes are adapted to boys’ interests, so the chances of having fun as a good boy are much greater. A hundred years earlier, say in 1740, Tom Sawyer might not have been allowed to get away with his pranks at all, and then he could not have had fun either as a good boy or as a bad boy. I am using the words good and bad for the moment as the authorities concerned would have looked on the matter. Tom ’s aunt called him a bad boy, however worthy and normal a modern psychologist would judge him.
