Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
    The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
    The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg
    Ebook92 pages1 hour

    The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

    By Mark Twain

    4/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 27, 2013
    Author

    Mark Twain

    Mark Twain, who was born Samuel L. Clemens in Missouri in 1835, wrote some of the most enduring works of literature in the English language, including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc was his last completed book—and, by his own estimate, his best. Its acquisition by Harper & Brothers allowed Twain to stave off bankruptcy. He died in 1910. 

    Read more from Mark Twain

    Related to The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

    Related ebooks

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Ghost Girl, Banana

      Aug 21, 2023

      By the time I was 25, there were only two things I remembered about Mumma. The first was that she smelled of watermelons, the second was that we were happy. We’d taken our father’s name of course, but a name is only half a story. The other half exist

      6 min read

    • Article

      Show Stoppers

      Sep 19, 2019

      ONE late afternoon in August I popped into the 105th Gilsland Agricultural Show with The Media Queen and Mouse, her Scottish deerhound. Nearby Gilsland was popularised by Sir Walter Scott who arrived in 1797 in search of a wife and found one. As a re

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Black Spider

      Nov 28, 2019

      The Black Spider
      22 min read

    • Article

      Cat Woman In Love

      Apr 3, 2024

      Cat Woman In Love
      4 min read

    • Article

      Only a Fragrance

      Sep 1, 2022

      Only a Fragrance
      3 min read

    • Article

      How I Began to Write

      Mar 6, 2019

      How I Began to Write
      6 min read

    • Article

      Very Hampstead, very Kingsley Amis

      Oct 29, 2020

      I HEARD THESE WORDS in the Flask Bookshop in Flask Walk, Hampstead — which I owned and ran from 1975 until 1988 — while slumped in the back room on my leather swivel chair, quite as usual, smoking a pipe and reading: I was always reading. It was a un

      10 min read

    • Article

      The Emperors of Existence

      Dec 28, 2018

      The Emperors of Existence
      9 min read

    • Article

      The Courage To Be Happy

      Feb 1, 2023

      MARRIAGE and columns have this in common: you tend to repeat yourself. More than once in these pages, I have quoted the New Yorker’s legendary film critic Pauline Kael. After President Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 she wrote: ‘I live in a rather

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘Lady in the Lake’: Featured Fiction from Laura Lippman

      Jul 23, 2019

      An excerpt from Lippman's latest, a sophisticated crime novel that captures the 1960s zeitgeist while painting a striking portrait of female ambition. The post ‘Lady in the Lake’: Featured Fiction from Laura Lippman appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    • Article

      Rosemary Handy ANDY

      Jan 27, 2021

      “Readers who have been good enough to take notes might remember our neighbour Carolyn, who is something in insurance and obviously does very well because she drives a bright red soft-top car that makes Mr Dear sigh with envy every time he passes it.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Post Office Hotel, Maude

      Dec 19, 2018

      Post Office Hotel, Maude
      6 min read

    • Article

      Speedboat

      Mar 24, 2022

      Nobody died that year. Nobody prospered. There were no births or marriages. Seventeen reverent satires were written – disrupting a cliché and, presumably, creating a genre. That was a dream, of course, but many of the most important things, I fi nd,

      14 min read

    • Article

      An Inspired Theft

      Jan 9, 2018

      An Inspired Theft
      3 min read

    • Article

      Deadly DAVID

      Feb 23, 2022

      Deadly DAVID
      3 min read

    • Article

      Elsi, The Strange Maid

      Aug 29, 2018

      Elsi, The Strange Maid
      17 min read

    • Article

      Talking RUBBISH

      Jul 1, 2020

      “It was like a moment from a Noël Coward play. You know, the bit where the lovers meet again for the first time in many years and it’s all slightly formal and awkward. There always seems to be a moment like that in a Noël Coward play. Not that I’m

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Bob Monkhouse Guide to Orgies

      Feb 7, 2024

      Well done, King Charles, for making us all more prostate-aware. I have been personally prostate-conscious for many years, thanks to one of the kings of comedy, the late, great Bob Monkhouse, who died of prostate cancer, aged 75, in December 1973. Bob

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Book of Loki

      Mar 12, 2018

      The Book of Loki
      20 min read

    • Article

      Mrs Dear, DETECTIVE

      Feb 26, 2020

      “Mr Dear, who had been repairing a leak in the roof of our chicken house, came into the kitchen with his hands covered in the black stuff that people use to repair leaks in chicken houses. ‘Not here! You’ll get it everywhere,’ I said. ‘Can’t you use

      3 min read

    • Article

      A Story for Your Daughters, a Story for Your Sons

      Mar 3, 2020

      The war had closed much of the city, cut off many of the smaller towns. Unable to trace his usual routes, the hat merchant headed into the mountains to try his luck. His father, before he died, had circled a small mountain village on his map, had not

      5 min read

    • Article

      The Kobold in the Corner PART 1

      Oct 1, 2022

      THE CARVING HAD stood off to the side of the chimney for years upon years, so long, in fact, that Friedrich had forgotten when it was put there, or why. It was a curious thing, fashioned from elm wood in a crude yet appealing style. It looked like a

      6 min read

    • Article

      A Space for Bette Howland

      May 6, 2019

      A Space for Bette Howland
      7 min read

    Reviews for The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

    4/5

    6 ratings7 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A wonderful short story; was one that I use to teach every year in my former carreer as English teacher.
    • 5/5
      Some books have a way of coming back. They are not of their time necessarily. But at their core is the human comedy which never grows stale or loses its relevance. Shakespeare's MacBeth is such a work. After all, the hunger for power and the willingness to murder in order to obtain it are universal in the human experience. The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg retains its luster for very similar reasons.I've often believed there are two Mark Twains. I won't argue that one of them is Samuel Clemens. But the Twain who wrote Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was not the same man who had been hardened by financial troubles and the death of several family members later in life. That Twain was a bitter, cynical bloke who had a bone to pick with the world. And damn me if you will, but I love that Twain much better.Maybe it's because my favorite works by Twain are not the perfectly rendered classics he penned at the height of his career. I read both Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as part of my school curriculum. I found them interesting and well written. I do consider them to be classics. But in some ways, I never quite connected with those novels. Much like The Adventures of Augie March or Anna Karenina, I respected the writer and the works, but neither sunk into my soul.My connection with Twain started with Pudd'nhead Wilson. Twain's satirical take on racial problems in America possesses a great sense of wit, but also a razor-sharp dissection of what makes humans tick. It is not a beautiful portrait of America. Nor is The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg. Once again, this was not a content man, but one who had literally fled the country to escape his creditors. Twain actually scrawled out ...Hadleyburg on hotel stationary from his various stops in Europe.The visceral anger that Twain felt towards his homeland and his hatred for human greed in general bleeds off the pages of ...Hadleyburg. That, however, is what makes it such a joy to read. Much like Pudd'nhead Wilson, this novella comes across more as a punk anthem, a short series of jabs at our guts, rather than an epic tale. And in spite of its imperfections (the lack of subtlety, the forgone conclusion that the citizens of Hadleyburg will get theirs), you enjoy every bit of the town's downward spiral. It is a wonderful adult fable that benefits from Twain's sense of humor, especially in the town hall scene once the supposed upstanding nineteen are revealed as charlatans.In fact, if you've been paying attention to the massive global economic crisis, ...Hadleyburg is the perfect companion to our current state of the world. After all, rampant greed was the cause of our financial system's downfall. Twain's tale of a supposedly incorruptible town, whose reputation made them the envy of citizens far and wide, and their ultimate downfall due to the simple sin of greed, still plays exceptionally well. Having experienced the harsh reality of being in debt, Twain was given a first hand lesson in the effects of greed.One could never argue that ...Hadleyburg is a classic work of American fiction. That is often reserved for Twain's earlier novels. But you can argue that it retains its own enduring allure, if for no other reason than its belief that, at our core, we are all capable of being tempted and corrupted.Of course, I would be a bastard for not complementing Melville House Classics for publishing "The Art of the Novella" series which keeps works such as The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, Melville's Benito Cereno, and Dostoevsky's The Eternal Husband in print as stand-alone entities (rather than being lumped into anthologies). They are publishing the novellas in a style worthy of Blue Note Records, with similar cover treatments, and a sense of dedication that usually is only found at smaller presses. Cheers to them.
    • 5/5
      “The weakest of all weak things is a virtue which has not been tested in the fire.Hadleyburg is famed for its reputation for honesty even teaching its children about it. However, when Hadleyburg offends a passing stranger he resolves to revenge himself on the town, rather than any individuals, by exposing its artificial virtue. He leaves a sack supposedly containing forty thousand dollars in gold with Mary and Edward Richards, asking them to find an unknown benefactor. This person had given him twenty dollars and advice. Whoever correctly repeats that advice can claim the money.Two central themes to this tale are appearance versus reality and more importantly human vanity. The stranger deliberately sets out to expose the town’s lies. Hadleyburg prides itself on its honesty, but all its leading citizens are willing to lie for the gold. There is no real virtue in Hadleyburg, only show.This book is more of an extended essay than a even novella really only running to roughly 60 pages and is reported to have been originally written on hotel stationary during a stopover. It is beautifully crafted and the language succinct that its depth of meaning far out weighs its number of pages. This is so a charming tale that left me if not laughing out loud at least with a permanent smile on my face as it cruelly exposed such basic human failings as self-interest and greed. It was a joy to read and I would thoroughly recommend reading it.
    • 4/5
      Oof. Twain pulls no punches when he feels like it. A scornful laugh against greed and hypocrisy.
    • 5/5
      Loved this comic yet profound story of a town that held itself to a virtue that it had not allowed itself to be tested against. When they are tested they're found sadly lacking. Wonderful humour and satire on the state of the 'holier-than-thou' mindset of some people and yet in the end Twain shows how one can be at one's best when not consciously thinking of putting the other man first for one's own gain. Yet this is a circular farce as the characters can never be satisfied and find the guilt of being "found out" too strong to bear that they ruin the reputations of each other even when they think they have the best intentions in mind. Twain's moral is that one cannot overcome temptation if one has never been tempted. An entertaining and humorous satire.
    • 1/5
      Written on hotel stationary in Europe while he was near the end of his career, growing cynical, and suffering depression from the death of his daughter – and it shows. Not funny, and nothing profound here about the human condition (yes, yes, money corrupts). I love Twain, but skip this one.
    • 4/5
      It isn't my favorite Twain story, but TMTCH is a great little yarn about greed and hypocrisy. Essentially the story revolves around a town of people with a reputation for virtue, but whose virtue has never really been tested. When a stranger delivers the test, all bets are off. Throughout, Twain pulls no punches as he harpoons the people of the town and through them the values of American society.

    Book preview

    The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg - Mark Twain

    The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, by Mark Twain

    The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg, by Mark

    Twain

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

    almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

    re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

    with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg

    Author: Mark Twain

    Release Date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #1213]

    Language: English

    Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

    ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG***

    Transcribed from the 1907 Chatto & Windus edition by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

    THE MAN THAT CORRUPTED HADLEYBURG

    I.

    It was many years ago.  Hadleyburg was the most honest and upright town in all the region round about.  It had kept that reputation unsmirched during three generations, and was prouder of it than of any other of its possessions.  It was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education.  Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone.  The neighbouring towns were jealous of this honourable supremacy, and affected to sneer at Hadleyburg’s pride in it and call it vanity; but all the same they were obliged to acknowledge that Hadleyburg was in reality an incorruptible town; and if pressed they would also acknowledge that the mere fact that a young man hailed from Hadleyburg was all the recommendation he needed when he went forth from his natal town to seek for responsible employment.

    But at last, in the drift of time, Hadleyburg had the ill luck to offend a passing stranger—possibly without knowing it, certainly without caring, for Hadleyburg was sufficient unto itself, and cared not a rap for strangers or their opinions.  Still, it would have been well to make an exception in this one’s case, for he was a bitter man, and revengeful.  All through his wanderings during a whole year he kept his injury in mind, and gave all his leisure moments to trying to invent a compensating satisfaction for it.  He contrived many plans, and all of them were good, but none of them was quite sweeping enough: the poorest of them would hurt a great many individuals, but what he wanted was a plan which would comprehend the entire town, and not let so much as one person escape unhurt.  At last he had a fortunate idea, and when it fell into his brain it lit up his whole head with an evil joy.  He began to form a plan at once, saying to himself That is the thing to do—I will corrupt the town.

    Six months later he went to Hadleyburg, and arrived in a buggy at the house of the old cashier of the bank about ten at night.  He got a sack out of the buggy, shouldered it, and staggered with it through the cottage yard, and knocked at the door.  A woman’s voice said Come in, and he entered, and set his sack behind the stove in the parlour, saying politely to the old lady who sat reading the Missionary Herald by the lamp:

    Pray keep your seat, madam, I will not disturb you.  There—now it is pretty well concealed; one would hardly know it was there.  Can I see your husband a moment, madam?

    No, he was gone to Brixton, and might not return before morning.

    Very well, madam, it is no matter.  I merely wanted to leave that sack in his care, to be delivered to the rightful owner when he shall be found.  I am a stranger; he does not know me; I am merely passing through the town to-night to discharge a matter which has been long in my mind.  My errand is now completed, and I go pleased and a little proud, and you will never see me again.  There is a paper attached to the sack which will explain everything.  Good-night, madam.

    The old lady was afraid of the mysterious big stranger, and was glad to see him go.  But her curiosity was roused, and she went straight to the sack and brought away the paper.  It began as follows:

    TO BE PUBLISHED, or, the right man sought out by private inquiry—either will answer.  This sack contains gold coin weighing a hundred and sixty pounds four ounces—

    Mercy on us, and the door not locked!

    Mrs. Richards flew to it all in a tremble and locked it, then pulled down the window-shades and stood frightened, worried, and wondering if there was anything else she could do toward making herself and the money more safe.  She listened awhile for burglars, then surrendered to curiosity, and went back to the lamp and finished reading the paper:

    "I am a foreigner, and am presently going back to my own country, to remain there permanently.  I am grateful to America for what I have received at her hands during my long stay under her flag; and to one of her citizens—a citizen of Hadleyburg—I am especially grateful for a great kindness done me a year or two ago.  Two great kindnesses in fact.  I will explain.  I was a gambler.  I say I WAS.  I was a ruined gambler.  I arrived in this village at night, hungry and without a penny.  I asked for help—in the dark; I was ashamed to beg in the light.  I begged of the right man.  He gave me twenty dollars—that is to say, he gave me life, as I considered it.  He also gave me fortune; for out of that money I have made myself rich at the gaming-table.  And finally, a remark which he made to me has remained with me to this day, and has at last conquered me; and in conquering has saved the remnant of my morals: I shall

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1