by Mark Twain, 1899
This is the last story in the Pudd’nhead Wilson book. It’s about a town, Hadleyburg, in which the residents pride themselves on their honesty. A man comes to town once and is hurt so badly, he devises a plan to get back at the town and expose their hypocrisy. After a year, he comes back with a supposed sack of gold and a letter with instructions, and deposits them in the home of the elderly Mr. and Mrs. Richards. Mrs. Richards tells her husband when he comes home and rather than keep the money and tell no one, he publishes the letter, which is a contest to find a supposed man who helped the gambler by giving him $20 and telling him something that changed his life. What were those words? Each of the 19 families receives a letter telling them that they were the ones and giving them the phrase. The night of the contest, the joke is on the 19 families, except for some reason, the Richards’s note is lost and they are believed to be the only honest family. But they know they are not. They get the money but it makes them crazy and they die a few weeks later in torment.
It’s a story about self-righteousness, greediness, dishonesty, suspicion, etc. I was convicted – I’m afraid I might have been one of the dishonest ones, lying in order to get the $40,000 sack of gold. There was one honest man in the town, Jack Halliday, who really was incorruptible, full of humor and honesty.
Mark Twain is a genius!