“Tom appeared on the sidewalk with a bucket of whitewash and a long-handled brush. He surveyed the fence, and all gladness left him and a deep melancholy settled down upon his spirit. Thirty yards of board fence nine feet high. Life to him seemed hollow, and existence but a burden.”

—  Mark Twain, book The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Source: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), Ch. 2

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Mark Twain637
American author and humorist 1835–1910

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