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'Was it Heaven or Hell? in its simple pathos, 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg' in its morally salutary irony, present vital evidence of that same transvaluation of current moral values which marks the age of Nietzsche and Ibsen, of Tolstoy and Shaw.
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.
Now and then, when a particularly shining name was called, the house made the Chair wait while it chanted the whole of the test-remark from the beginning to the closing words, "And go to hell or Hadleyburg try and make it the for-or-m-e-r!" and in these special cases they added a grand and agonised and imposing "A-a-a-a-men!"
I laid a plan, and gathered a list of names. My project was to corrupt Hadleyburg the Incorruptible. My idea was to make liars and thieves of nearly half a hundred smirchless men and women who had never in their lives uttered a lie or stolen a penny. I was afraid of Goodson. He was neither born nor reared in Hadleyburg.
I know that I can trust to your honour and honesty, for in a citizen of Hadleyburg these virtues are an unfailing inheritance, and so I am going to reveal to you the remark, well satisfied that if you are not the right man you will seek and find the right one and see that poor Goodson's debt of gratitude for the service referred to is paid.
Then the happy house started in at the beginning and sang the four lines through twice, with immense swing and dash, and finished up with a crashing three-times-three and a tiger for "Hadleyburg the Incorruptible and all Symbols of it which we shall find worthy to receive the hall-mark to-night." Then the shoutings at the Chair began again, all over the place: "Go on! go on! Read! read some more!
But at bottom he was far other than a mere maker of boisterous jokes for people with frontier preferences in humor. He was a passionate, chivalric lover of things fair and good, although too honest to pretend to see beauty and goodness where he could not personally detect them and an equally passionate hater of evil. Read "The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg" and "The Mysterious Stranger."
'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg' is a masterpiece, eminently worthy of the genius of a Swift. It proclaims Mark Twain not only as a supreme artist, but also as eminently and distinctively a moralist. It is impossible to think of Mark Twain in his maturer development as other than a moralist. My personal acquaintance with Mr.
The navvy may rejoice in 'Life on the Mississippi'. Youth and age may share without jealousy the abounding fun and primitive naturalness of 'Huckleberry Finn'. True lovers of adventure may revel in the masterly narrative of 'Tom Sawyer'. The artist may bestow his critical meed of approval upon the beauty of 'Joan of Arc'. The moralist may heartily validate the ethical lesson of 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg'. Anyone may pay the tribute of irresistible explosions of laughter to the horse-play of 'Roughing It', the colossal extravagance of 'The Innocents Abroad', the irreverence and iconoclasm of that Yankee intruder into the hallowed confines of Camelot.
A third line was at once furnished "Corruptibles far from Hadleyburg are " The house roared that one too. As the last note died, Jack Halliday's voice rose high and clear, freighted with a final line "But the Symbols are here, you bet!" That was sung, with booming enthusiasm.
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