were eager to barter the treasures of their pockets in exchange for this privilege.  And never did a fence receive such a whitewashing!  There wasn’t fence enough and, therefore, the process must needs be repeated again and again.  The best part of the entire episode was that everybody was happy, Tom included.  Tom was happy in seeing his plan work, and the other boys were happy because they were doing work that Tom had caused them to become eager to do.

=Work as a privilege.=—­To make work seem a privilege is a worthy task for the school to set before itself, and if it but achieves this it will prove itself worth all it costs.  At first thought, it seems a stupendous task, and so it is.  But Tom Sawyer accomplished it in an easy, natural way, with no parade or bombast.  He had habit and tradition to contend against, just as the school has, but he overbore these obstacles and won the contest.  Some of those boys, before that morning, may have thought it ignoble to perform menial tasks; but Tom soon overcame that feeling and led them to feel that only an artist can whitewash a fence properly.  Some of them may have been interpreting life as having a good time, but, under the tutorage of Tom, they soon came to feel that having a good time means whitewashing a fence.

=The persistency of habit.=—­In striving to exalt and ennoble work, the school runs counter to habits of thought that have been formed in the home, and these habits prove stubborn.  The home has so long imposed work as a task that the school finds it difficult to make it seem a privilege.  The father and mother have so often complained of their work, in the presence of their children, that all work comes to assume the aspect of a hardship, if not a penalty.  It often happens, too, that the parents encourage their children to think that education affords immunity from work, and the children attend school with that notion firmly implanted in their minds.  They seem to think that when they have achieved an education they will receive their reward in the choicest gifts that Fortune has to bestow, and that their only responsibility will be to indicate their choices.

=Misconceptions of work.=—­Still further, when children enter school imbued with this conception of work, they feel that the work of the school is imposed upon them as a task from which they would fain be free.  If their parents had only been as wise as Tom Sawyer and had set up motives before them in connection with their home activities and thus exalted all their work to the plane of privilege, the work of the school would be greatly simplified.  It is no slight task to eradicate this misconception of work, but somehow it must be done before the work of the school can get on.  Until this is done, the work of the school will be done grudgingly instead of buoyantly, and work that is done under compulsion is never joyous work.  Nor will work that is done under compulsion ever be done in full measure, as the days of slavery clearly prove.