“The $30,000 Bequest” (1904)

This Mark Twain story seemed a little humdrum and forced to me, although it deals with one of his favorite themes, the comical madness of greed and all the wreck a little bit of money can cause. The two principals here—husband Sally and wife Aleck, gender confusion noted by Twain himself, though not really to what end intended—catch wind that a long-lost uncle will be leaving them money on his death (amount per title) on the condition they never make inquiries of him. As it happens, he dies early in the story, but the couple never learns of it because they know they don’t dare ask after him. This story is about what their fevered imaginations dream up, which ultimately are amusing and harmless. There’s not really any story to this story to drive it home, as in the similarly minded “The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg.” In fact, Sally and Aleck are often charming, if maybe a little pathetic. Another (or perhaps the same) mystifying gender inversion, or maybe not one at all, is that Aleck is the responsible manager of finances whereas Sally only wants to know how much he can spend. Aleck keeps plowing the (imaginary) money into investments, as capital. She starts from the day they hear of the bequest—which, as fate would have it, was only a week before they should have gotten it outright. Over the years she puts the money here, moves it there. And over the years they actually become billionaires, though Twain expresses it rather oddly as “twenty-four hundred millionaires”—as if the idea itself of a billionaire were ludicrous (as out of reach as a trillionaire would seem to be now, perhaps, here in this second gilded age). Anyway, Aleck finally slips up late in the game and loses everything, which, as a fantasy, just isn’t a tragedy. There’s still the real bequest, if they ever hear of it, let alone get it. At story’s end they haven’t, so we’re left at sea about what the story is about. They are greedy but they are also harmless and kind. Perhaps they wasted portions of their lives, but who hasn’t done that and isn’t it in the eye of the beholder anyway? To me, they look like an exceptionally compatible and loving couple, but that’s not what this story is about either.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over. (Library of America)
Read story online.
Listen to story online.