The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

Hadleyburg had the reputation of being the most honest town in the world.

The reputation was just. The citizens were amazingly proud of it, and the most tender feelings were excited at the bare suggestion that it might be otherwise.

A thread of stubborn honesty ran all through their habits and their talk, and you could not buy a politician in Hadleyburg with a fine bay horse and a sack of gold dust.

They were honest as a community; and they were prouder of it than of any other of their virtues. Parents brought up their children upon it — told them of the miracles of Hadleyburg, and of how the town had been founded by a man who could not be tempted to take a bribe.

It was a sort of local religion. Their Sunday sermons touched it. Their newspapers were constantly singing it. The school-teachers, the lawyers, the merchants — every class and condition — cherished it. So much so, that at last the thing went into the head of the people as a positive article of faith: they believed that they were honestly better than other folks, that their honor would not let them do a dishonest thing, and they began to hope that the world would recognize and honor them for it.

A perfect moral atmosphere is an exceedingly small thing in which to be perfect; and Hadleyburg, with all its moral air and tightness of conscience, had managed to grow very rich and to be vainglorious over its incorruptibility.

It happened that a man came to Hadleyburg who had an old grudge against it. He had been cheated there once in his youth by a venal judge, and had never forgiven either the town or the judge. He determined to baffle and expose them.

He set about it in his own way. He made a long, patient preparation. He studied the people, their habits, their prejudices; and when he had learned them he contrived a test which, if it worked, would put them into a position where they could not resist doing what was wrong without destroying the shrine of their reputation.

He managed to get hold of a miserly sum of money — small as the price of a brick in that town; but to him it was enough to tempt into action the slumbering finesse of his revenge. He wrote a simple, plausible letter, and he found a way to make it public in the town.

The letter contained a proposition: a gift to Hadleyburg from an anonymous benefactor — a sack of gold, with the name of the man who had been assisted to be engraved upon it as the one who had been helped by that gift. There was to be a ceremony, and the person whose name it was to bear must step forward and acknowledge it.

Hadleyburg took the bait. The whole town hurried to the square when the day came, and the purse was displayed, and the name written down in a book; and the townspeople, stimulated by the excitement and by the desire of being able to say, "We are honest; we did not accept a bribe," watched each other closely.

It was a ludicrous situation. The temptation was not strong; the folk were anxious, and their nerves were on edge. One after another of the leading citizens examined the book and hesitated; and, driven sometimes by fear and sometimes by pride, some who had the opportunity to claim the purse refrained.

But human nature is cunning; and when it was whispered about that a certain man — a stranger who had lived for years in the town and seemed in need — was the proper recipient, the matter got complicated.

The denouement is too long a piece of delicate strength to be told in a sentence or two. It required the workings of many minds to bring it about, and the story of them would be tedious if repeated here. It was a comedy and a tragedy mixed, and the last scene left the town a different place from what it had been before.