The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories
1906
Twain's final collection finds him at his most merciless. The titular story follows Saladin and Electra Foster, a modest couple who receive word of a $30,000 inheritance from a distant relative. What follows is a comic tragedy of imagination run riot: they dream beyond the money itself, calculating interest and scheming through grand investments until their fantasy fortune swells to millions. The comedy lives in this grotesque gap between who they are and who they imagine becoming. But beneath the humor lies something darker: a cutting critique of American materialism and the lie that wealth will transform you. The thirty stories collected here span four decades of Twain's career, from the young humorist who could make the nation laugh to the old man who saw through nearly everything. This is not the Twain of innocent pranks. This is the Twain who understood that the American Dream is often just a con we run on ourselves, and he dissects that delusion with savage pleasure.
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“In the country neighborhood thereabouts, along the dusty roads, one found at intervals the prettiest little cottage homes, snug and cozy, and so cobwebbed with vines snowed thick with roses that the doors and windows were wholly hidden from sight-sign that these were deserted homes, forsaken years ago by defeated and disappointed families who could neither sell them nor give them away.””
— Mark Twain
“It had as many immoralities as the machine of today has virtues. After a year or two I found that it was degrading my character, so I thought I would give it to Howells.””
— Mark Twain
“At the beginning of that interval a type-machine was a curiosity. The person who owned one was a curiosity, too. But now it is the other way about: the person who doesn't own one is a curiosity.””
— Mark Twain
“Had I never loved, I never would have been unhappy; but I turn to Him who can save, and if His wisdom does not will my expected union, I know He will give me strength to bear my lot.””
— Mark Twain
“His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although”
— Mark Twain
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Twain, Mark. The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories. Lex, lex-books.com/book/the-30-000-bequest-and-other-stories-53bb1b4e-54ba-4ea1-8332-b9db357d480f.Twain, M. (1906). The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-30-000-bequest-and-other-stories-53bb1b4e-54ba-4ea1-8332-b9db357d480fTwain, Mark. The $30,000 Bequest, and Other Stories. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/the-30-000-bequest-and-other-stories-53bb1b4e-54ba-4ea1-8332-b9db357d480f.
