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The town of Hadleyburg is so proud of its reputation as the most honest, incorruptible place in the country that it once insulted a passing stranger. Years…
The town of Hadleyburg is so proud of its reputation as the most honest, incorruptible place in the country that it once insulted a passing stranger. Years later the stranger takes his revenge: he leaves a sack of gold coins, supposedly for the townsman who once did him a kindness, a man who will be known by a remark he made. Nineteen of the town's leading citizens are secretly told the 'remark', and every one of them claims the gold, until a public meeting exposes them all.
Context and significance
Mark Twain published the story in 1899, one of his sharpest satires of hypocrisy; the town learns that virtue untested is worth little and changes its motto to 'Lead us into temptation'. The volume adds other stories and essays. Read Pudd'nhead Wilson, and see his life.
About the author
Samuel Clemens (1835–1910) grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, on the banks of the Mississippi, and worked as a printer's apprentice, a steamboat pilot, a silver prospector in Nevada and a newspaper reporter before he became Mark Twain. A comic story about a jumping frog made his name in 1865, and his lectures and travel books made him the most famous American writer of his time.