The man that corrupted Hadleyburg, and other stories and essays Book

"'[…] It is a mean town, a hard, stingy town, and hasn't a virtue in the world but this honesty it is so celebrated for and so conceited about […]'"

Who is this mysterious stranger that plots to ruin the little town of Hadleyburg, whose inhabitants are so proud of their honesty that they take the moral high ground over all other communities around them? All we know is that when he passed through Hadleyburg on his travels, he felt deeply insulted by the citizens of that town - for whatever reason - and that from that moment on the desire of taking revenge rankled in his heart. His injury must have been very gross, or his sense of injury must have been very keen for it is his intention to let not one citizen of the town go unscathed but to ruin the reputation of the entire town, and so he bides his time and concocts a devilish plan to fulfil his aim. His plan is based on the assumption that a virtue that is never put to a real test is a weak sham, and that's why he confronts the town, i.e. its nineteen leading citizens with an opportunity they can hardly resist to ignore, i.e. the opportunity to come into the possession of 40,000 dollars. He has studied the town well and knows how to bait his hooks so cleverly as to induce his fish to bite, and when they bite, he is certainly going to be there.

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg shows Twain at his darkest, most misanthropic, but while he deftly satirizes the mealy-mouthed philistines and the hypocritical and greedy dignitaries of a narrow-minded town, he also shows how the need to make ends meet, to live with modest means if not exactly in poverty, may cause people, like the old couple Richardson, to succumb to the whisperings of covetousness. All in all, Twain's idea of human nature presents itself as utterly disillusioned and bleak in this story, as can also be seen from a short but very remarkable phrase like this,

"[…] he could hear his microbes gnaw, the place was so still."

Man as a rich and inexhaustible pasture for microbes … instead of a "piece of work […] noble in reason […], infinite in faculty, […] the beauty of the world […]", as even the sullen Prince of Denmark had to concede. That is surely strong meat, and as such difficult both to chew and to digest. But nevertheless, the outlook is not entirely bleak in that there is still the reverend Burgess, whose conduct is characterized by gratefulness and even the vengeful stranger is not above, or beneath, giving an honest man his due (although this act of kindness will have disastrous consequences since it is based on the misinterpretation of its object). Apart from that, the story does not deny the existence of virtue and decency in human beings but is rather to be taken as a cautionary tale against people's tendency to preen themselves on their goodness and their moral superiority over those outside their own group. The hypocrisy and fatuousness which serve as a thin layer of varnish covering vanity, egocentrism and complacency can be laughed at as long as we see them in the Hadleyburgers, but I think they still come in many forms, even nowadays. Some people might blame me for saying this, but I could not help thinking of our present brazen jeunesse dorée who indulge in How dare you hysterics, accusing others of stealing their future when it is in fact globalization and technology that have enabled them to enjoy the lifestyle they unthinkingly regard themselves as being entitled to or at least show no convincing inclination to emancipate themselves from. I am not talking of all young people here, but simply of those who prefer the feeling of moral superiority they derive from voicing claims whose realization would mean the end of civilization as we know it and destroy livelihoods all over the globe, and then comfortably partake of the everyday amenities and luxuries of a lifestyle their parents could not even have dreamt of when they were their age. Hadleyburg is by far larger than presented it that tale by Mark Twain, and there are lots of people around whose moral pretensions have never really been put to the test.