They win over the town and befriend Wilson, but earn an enemy in Tom after Luigi thrashes him for an insult. Shaken to his core, Tom agrees to pay off Roxy and do whatever she says.ĭawson’s Landing comes alive with the arrival of a piano-playing pair of conjoined Italian twins, Angelo and Luigi Capello. In a fiery response, Roxy threatens to tell Judge Driscoll that Tom is actually her son-and should be enslaved. Now a free woman, but facing hard times, Roxy pleads to Tom for a single dollar. Twenty years later, Tom is a drunken scoundrel, deeply in debt after gambling away his uncle’s money. Wilson’s true intelligence is only grasped by Roxy and Judge Driscoll. Although Wilson desires to be a lawyer, his career never launches-as his offbeat interests, including a fascination with fingerprints, cause most in the backwater town to mock him as a “Pudd’nhead,” a taunt Tom frequently uses. Next door to the Judge lives the good-natured Dave Wilson. Following Percy’s early death, “Tom” is entrusted to the care of his wealthy “uncle,” Judge York Driscoll, the premier citizen of Dawson’s Landing. Unaware of the switch, the inattentive Percy treats Roxy’s boy as his own and spoils him, producing a selfish and wicked child, who beats “Chambers” and abuses the unceasing care of Roxy. So one night, she switches their clothes and cradles-thus, Chambers becomes Tom. Desperate to avoid this, Roxy realizes that her baby is nearly identical to her master’s baby, Tom Driscoll. After her master, Percy Driscoll, threatens to sell her down the river, Roxy fears her newborn son, Chambers, will be condemned to that awful fate. Despite being 15/16ths white, Roxy has spent her whole life as an enslaved woman.

Pudd'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain