To Kill a Mockingbird (To Kill a Mockingbird, #1)

by Harper Lee

I thought she was going to spit in it, which was the only reason anybody in Maycomb held out his hand: it was a time-honored method of sealing oral contracts. Wondering what bargain we had made, I turned to the class for an answer, but the class looked back at me in puzzlement. Miss Caroline picked up her ruler, gave me half a dozen quick little pats, then told me to stand in the corner. A storm of laughter broke loose when it finally occurred to the class that Miss Caroline had whipped me.

“There ain’t no need to fear a cootie, ma’am. Ain’t you ever seen one?

Calpurnia bent down and kissed me. I ran along, wondering what had come over her. She had wanted to make up with me, that was it. She had always been too hard on me, she had at last seen the error of her fractious ways, she was sorry and too stubborn

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view—” “Sir?” “—until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

Jem was a born hero. It was a melancholy little drama, woven from bits and scraps of gossip and neighborhood legend: Mrs. Radley had been beautiful until she married Mr. Radley and lost all her money. She also lost most of her teeth, her hair, and her right forefinger (Dill’s contribution. Boo bit it off one night when he couldn’t find any cats and squirrels to eat.); she sat in the livingroom and cried most of the time, while Boo slowly whittled away all the furniture in the house.

“You know old Mr. Radley was a foot-washing Baptist—” “That’s what you are, ain’t it?” “My shell’s not that hard, child. I’m just a Baptist.” “Don’t you all believe in foot-washing?” “We do. At home in the bathtub.”

“Foot-washers believe anything that’s pleasure is a sin.

Miss Maudie grinned. “Thank you ma’am. Thing is, foot-washers think women are a sin by definition. They take the Bible literally, you know.”

There are just some kind of men who—who’re so busy worrying about the next world they’ve never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.”

“That is three-fourths colored folks and one-fourth Stephanie Crawford,” said Miss Maudie grimly. “Stephanie Crawford even told me once she woke up in the middle of the night and found him looking in the window at her. I said what did you do, Stephanie, move over in the bed and make room for him? That shut her up a while.”

Dill Harris could tell the biggest ones I ever heard. Among other things, he had been up in a mail plane seventeen times, he had been to Nova Scotia, he had seen an elephant, and his grandaddy was Brigadier General Joe Wheeler and left him his sword.

Besides making change in the collection plate every Sunday, Mr. Avery sat on the porch every night until nine o’clock and sneezed.

“Mr. Radley shot at a Negro in his collard patch.” “Oh. Did he hit him?” “No,” said Miss Stephanie. “Shot in the air. Scared him pale, though. Says if anybody sees a white nigger around, that’s the one. Says he’s got the other barrel waitin’ for the next sound he hears in that patch, an’ next time he won’t aim high, be it dog, nigger, or—Jem Finch!”

He evidently remembered he was engaged to me, for he ran back out and kissed me swiftly in front of Jem. “Yawl write, hear?” he bawled after us.

Jem stayed moody and silent for a week. As Atticus had once advised me to do, I tried to climb into Jem’s skin and walk around in it: if I had gone alone to the Radley Place at two in the morning, my funeral would have been held the next afternoon.

The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me—he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn’t see how they got anything done,

Less than two weeks later we found a whole package of chewing gum, which we enjoyed, the fact that everything on the Radley Place was poison having slipped Jem’s memory.

Jem and I decided that Boo had got her at last, but when Atticus returned from the Radley house he said she died of natural causes, to our disappointment.

“The world’s endin’, Atticus! Please do something—!” I dragged him to the window and pointed. “No it’s not,” he said. “It’s snowing.”

I went so far as to pay a nickel for the privilege of rubbing my head against the head of Miss Rachel’s cook’s son, who was afflicted with a tremendous ringworm. It didn’t take.

I liked to smell him: he was like a bottle of alcohol and something pleasantly sweet.

He declined to let us take our air rifles to the Landing (I had already begun to think of shooting Francis)

“Well, can’t you just see his face when he gets a letter from me with nothing in it? It’ll drive him nuts.” Talking to Francis gave me the sensation of settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean. He was the most boring child I ever met. As

Aunt Alexandra was a back-porch listener.

Atticus was feeble: he was nearly fifty. When Jem and I asked him why he was so old, he said he got started late, which we felt reflected upon his abilities and manliness.

Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.” That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father’s right,” she said. “Mockingbirds don’t do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don’t eat up people’s gardens, don’t nest in corncribs, they don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That’s why it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird.”

“What are you shooting at?” “Miss Maudie’s rear end.” Atticus turned and saw my generous target bending over her bushes. He pushed his hat to the back of his head and crossed the street. “Maudie,” he called, “I thought I’d better warn you. You’re in considerable peril.”

make touchdowns for the Baptists.

“People in their right minds never take pride in their talents,” said Miss Maudie.

It was times like these when I thought

my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.

For the life of me, I did not understand how he could sit there in cold blood and read a newspaper when his only son stood an excellent chance of being murdered with a Confederate

Army relic.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.”

Jem was twelve. He was difficult to live with, inconsistent, moody. His appetite was appalling, and he told me so many times to stop pestering him I consulted Atticus: “Reckon he’s got a tapeworm?” Atticus said no, Jem was growing.

Dill concluded by saying he would love

me forever and not to worry, he would come get me and marry me as soon as he got enough money together, so please write. The fact that I had a permanent fiancé was little compensation for his absence: I had never thought about it, but summer was Dill by the fishpool smoking string, Dill’s eyes alive with complicated plans to make Boo Radley

emerge; summer was the swiftness with which Dill would reach up and kiss me when Jem was not looking, the longings we sometimes felt each other feel. With him, life was routine; without him, l...

banging issued from the radiator pipes, persisting until someone investigated and brought forth Eunice Ann saying she didn’t want to play Shadrach any more—Jem Finch said she wouldn’t get burnt if she had enough faith, but it was hot down there.

She had put so much starch in my dress it came up like a tent when I sat down.

This was too much for me. “How’re we gonna sing it if there ain’t any hymn-books?”

Reverend Sykes intended to sweat the amount due out of his flock.

You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language.”

and Aunt Alexandra was positively irritable on the Lord’s Day. I guess it was her Sunday corset. She was not fat, but solid, and she chose protective garments that drew up her bosom to giddy heights, pinched in her waist, flared out her rear, and managed to suggest that Aunt Alexandra’s was once an hour-glass figure. From any angle, it was formidable.

I said I would like it very much, which was a lie, but one must lie under certain circumstances and at all times when one can’t do anything about them.

when Jem permitted me to accompany him (he was now positively allergic to my presence when in public),

“Jem’s got the look-arounds,” an affliction Calpurnia said all boys caught at his age. “I’ve just got this feeling,” Jem said, “just this feeling.”

“I told you, Scout, you just hafta know who they are.” “Well how do you know we ain’t Negroes?” “Uncle Jack Finch says we really don’t know. He says as far as he can trace back the Finches we ain’t, but for all he knows we mighta come straight out of Ethiopia durin’ the Old Testament.”

“Well if we came out durin’ the Old Testament it’s

too long ago to matter.” “That’s what I thought,” said Jem, “but around here once you have a drop of Negro b...