Everyone remembers that Tom tricks the village's "free boys" into whitewashing the fence for him, but the first boy who stops to talk to him is Jim, even though "Ole missis" has threatened to "take an' tar de head off'n me" if Jim doesn't tend to his chores. In this illustration we see Jim "flying down the street with a tingling rear" after Polly catches him misbehaving. In the abstract we are seeing a slave child who has been beaten, but the smile on Jim's face maintains the novel's indulgent atmosphere.
The Barrett Collection, UVA PS1306 .A1 1876b