Department of English
Faculty of Arts,
Chulalongkorn University
The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
(1893)
Mark
Twain
(November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910)
Notes
60 afternoon board:
- board (Merriam-Webster)
1 obsolete: border, edge
2 nautical: the side of a ship
3 a: a piece of sawed lumber of little thickness and a length
greatly exceeding its width <nailed boards over the
windows> b boards plural, theater: stage
2a(2) <one of the best actors that ever trod the boards>
c boards plural: skis <a new pair of boards>
4 a archaic: table
3a b: a table spread with a meal <offered to help clear
the board> c: daily meals especially when
furnished for pay <paid for her room and board> d:
a table at which a council or magistrates sit <sat at the council board>
e (1): a group of persons having managerial, supervisory,
investigatory, or advisory powers <She is on the bank's board of
directors.> <board of examiners> <a board member>
(2): an examination given by an examining board —often used in
plural <pass the medical boards> f: league,
association <local board of realtors> g card
games (1): the exposed hands of all the players in a stud
poker game (2): an exposed dummy (see 1dummy 2a) hand in
bridge
5 a: a flat usually rectangular piece of material (as wood)
designed for a special purpose: such as (1): springboard 1
<Do a backflip off the board.> (2):
surfboard b basketball: backboard 1 <a rebound
off the boards>; also: a rebound in basketball <averaging
7.8 boards per game> c: a surface, frame, or
device for posting notices <Pin the photo to the board.>
d: blackboard <wrote the assignment on the board>
e: switchboard
6 a: cardboard b: the stiff foundation piece for
the side of a book cover
7 finance: a securities or commodities exchange (see 1exchange
5a)
8 boards plural, ice hockey: the low wooden wall
enclosing a hockey rink
9 electronics: a sheet of insulating material carrying
circuit elements and terminals so that it can be inserted in an
electronic apparatus (as a computer)
10 computers: bulletin
board 2 <Add a link to the board.>
60 brig:
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- "brig"
(Merriam-Webster)
A two-masted sailing ship with square rigging on both masts is
called a brig. Brigs were both naval and merchant (mercantile)
vessels. As merchantmen, they often followed coastal trading
routes. However, ocean voyages were not uncommon
- "brig,"
An Encyclopedia of Naval History, Anthony Bruce and
William Cogar (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998): 52.
A two-masted sailing vessel of the 18th and 19th
centuries. The word "brig" was originally an abbreviation for
the brigantine, but evolved as a distinct type with square
rigging on both her fore and mainmasts; she also carried on
her main mast a lower fore and aft sail with a gaff and boom.
With a displacement of between 140 and 500 tons, this
relatively small design normally permitted only one deck, one
battery of guns and a minimal crew. A brig with a displacement
at the upper end of the scale might be over 100 feet (30.4 m)
in length and have a beam of 30 feet (9.1 m). The brig was
able to serve a dual purpose. In the merchant service it was
used for cargo-carrying as well as whaling, while in the main
navies of the period it was employed as a small warship.
- "Rigging
of American Sailing Vessels," Peabody Essex Museum
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- Ocean's Eighteen: Life Onboard an 18th-Century
Ship, dir. Aleksandr Panov, RT Documentary (2014; 26:09
min.)
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60 flunkey:
- flunkey (Merriam-Webster)
1 a: a liveried servant b: one performing menial or
miscellaneous duties
2: yes-man
- flunkey (Oxford
Dictionaries)
derogatory
1 A liveried manservant or footman.
1.1 A person who performs relatively menial tasks for someone
else, especially obsequiously.
67 nobby:
68 turned my head:
- turn one's head (Merriam-Webster)
to cause to become infatuated or conceited <success had not turned
his head>
70 Cheapside: a commercial street in London
73 cribbage: a card game
How to Tell a Story
I do not claim that I can tell a story as it ought to be told. I only claim
to know how a story ought to be told, for I have been almost daily in the
company of the most expert storytellers for many years.
There are several kinds of stories, but only one difficult kind—the
humorous. I will talk mainly about that one. The humorous story is American,
the comic story is English, the witty story is French. The humorous story
depends for its effect upon the manner of the telling; the comic
story and the witty story upon the matter.
The humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as
much as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and
witty stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles
gently along, the others burst.
The humorous story is strictly a work of art,—high and delicate art,—and
only an artist can tell it; but no art is necessary in telling the comic and
the witty story; anybody can do it. The art of telling a humorous
story—understand, I mean by word of mouth, not print—was created in America,
and has remained at home.
The humorous story is told gravely; the teller does his best to conceal the
fact that he even dimly suspects that there is anything funny about it; but
the teller of the comic story tells you beforehand that it is one of the
funniest things he has ever heard, then tells it with eager delight, and is
the first person to laugh when he gets through. And sometimes, if he has had
good success, he is so glad and happy that he will repeat the "nub" of it
and glance around from face to face, collecting applause, and then repeat it
again. It is a pathetic thing to see.
Very often, of course, the rambling and disjointed humorous story finishes
with a nub, point, snapper, or whatever you like to call it. Then the
listener must be alert, for in many cases the teller will divert attention
from that nub by dropping it in a carefully casual and indifferent way, with
the pretense that he does not know it is a nub.
—Mark
Twain, "How
to Tell a Story," 1895, How
to Tell a Story and Other Essays (1897)
Comprehension Check
- How well does Henry Adams' job
as a "mining-broker's clerk" pay him (60)?
- Where and when does the narrator
usually go sailing on his "little sail-boat" (60)?
- Why does Lloyd Hastings ask
Henry "Unreel it? What, again?" (75)? Why is he surprised?
- Why is Henry puzzled by
Hastings' "again" and asks it back (75)?
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Study Questions
- What does it mean that "an
expert in all the details of stock traffic" is happy with
being without family, being smart, and being honest (60)?
- What is achieved in the first
two paragraphs?
- What influences or flavor of
oral tradition do you find in this short story?
- What kinds of information does
Twain use to describe the very rich?
- What characteristics of being
poor does Twain use to describe the narrator during his
first forty-eight hours or so in London?
- Despite no food and shelter for
twenty-four hours (60), why is the narrator able to feel
"first rate" (65)?
- How does the narrator's
declaration early on that he is "alone in the world, and had
nothing to depend upon but my wits and a clean reputation"
(60) set up for the later echo: "I had nothing in the world
but a million pounds" (65)?
- What is the function of Twain's
several understatements and overstatements? Consider, for
example,
- one of those large smiles
which goes around over, and has folds in it, and wrinkles,
and spirals, and looks like the place where you have
thrown a brick in a pond; and then in the act of his
taking a glimpse of the bill his mile froze solid, and
turned yellow, and looked like those wavy, wormy spreads
of lava which you find hardened on little levels on the
side of Vesuvius. (66)
- it'll do for a makeshift (67)
- couldn't appear in an
opera-box without concentrating there the fire of a
thousand lorgnettes (69)
- she blushed till her hair
turned red (73)
- she laughed herself lame (73)
- how poor I am, and how
miserable, how defeated, routed, annihilated! (75)
- I am ruined past hope; nothing
can save me! (75)
- that little loan you let me
have (78)
- it's but a little thing to ask
(79)
- There're not words enough in
the unabridged to describe it (79)
- What do oxymorons and
oxymoron-like expressions achieve in the story? Consider
such contrastive or contradictory descriptions as
- muddy treasure (60)
- gorgeous flunkey (60)
- It didn't fit, and wasn't in
any way attractive [...] so I didn't find any fault (65)
- plain, rich, modest, and just
ducally nobby (67)
- pauper as I was, I had money
to spend (68)
- this awful career of mine in
London (69)
- English men always eat dinner
before they go out to dinner (72)
- I never saw a painful story—a
story of a person's troubles and worries and fears—produce
just that kind of effect before. So I loved her
all the more (73–74)
- I [...] tripped him up and
tied him.
Then he lay there, perfectly happy (77)
- Only just try me thirty or
forty years (79)
- Compare the tailor-shop
proprietor's and Tod's reaction to seeing the £1,000,000
bank-note (66–67). How does the behavior of each distinguish
him for their different positions?
- What is the difference between indefinitely
and eternally (67)?
- Consider the multiple
temptations thrown in Adams' way. What is revealed by how he
handles them?
- I stopped, of course, and
fastened my desiring eye on that muddy treasure. My mouth
watered for it, my stomach craved it, my whole being
begged for it. But every time I made a move to get it some
passing eye detected my purpose, and of course I
straightened up, then, and looked indifferent (60)
- They had just finished their
breakfast, and the sight of the remains of it almost
overpowered me. I could hardly keep my wits together in
the presence of that food (60–61)
- I must have passed that shop
back and forth six times during that manful struggle (65)
- I was in a kind of agony. I
was right on the point of coming out with the words,
"Lloyd, I'm a pauper myself—absolutely penniless, and in debt!"
But a white-hot idea came flaming through my head, and I
gripped my jaws together, and calmed myself down till I
was cold as a capitalist (76)
- Some common
words in this story seem to have meanings not so common to
us now. Can you guess what Mark Twain, writing in the
nineteenth century, must have meant by them? Go to a
dictionary like Merriam-Webster
or Oxford
that gives extensive, archaic or obsolete definitions and
look up some of the following to confirm the meaning you
arrived at from context clues. Keep in mind, though, that
Twain is American and that the story is set in London, so
some terms may be more likely to appear with the proper
meaning in Merriam-Webster rather than in British
English dictionaries or vice versa.
- board
- situation
- gift
- primate
- minister
- romance
- Consider the many bets formal
and informal, explicit and implied in the story. What is at
stake and what is the outcome? Look at, for example,
- these were setting my feet in
the road to eventual fortune, and I was content with the
prospect (60)
- Brother B said he would bet
twenty thousand pounds that the man would live thirty
days, any way, on that million, and keep out of jail, too.
Brother A took him up (61)
- they agreed that I filled the
bill all around; so they elected me unanimously (61)
- you would not listen to me,
said I wouldn't succeed (71)
- you'll forgive me, I
know (78)
- the several surprises (77, 78)
- What
transformations take place throughout the story?
- Is this story a tragedy or a
comedy?
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Review Sheet
Characters
Henry Adams, Hal, narrator
– "When I was twenty-seven years old, I
was a mining broker's clerk in San Francisco, and an expert in all the
details of stock traffic" (60);
"'vest-pocket million-pounder'" (68); "I had always been lucky" (70);
"the Henry Adams referred to [...] it isn't six months since you were
clerking away for Blake Hopkins in Frisco on a salary" (70)
Portia Langham –
"this daughter's [the American minister's daughter's] visiting
friend, an English girl of twenty-two, named Portia Langham, whom I
fell in love with in two minutes, and she with me" (70)
Papa –
"he's my steppapa" (79)
Uncle Abel –
"the bet which my brother Abel and I made" (78)
American
minister –
"It turned out that he [the minister] and my father had been
schoolmates in boyhood, Yale students together later" (69)
Lloyd
Hastings –
"'after a hard six hours' grind over those Extension papers, and I
tried to persuade you [Adams] to come to London with me'" (71)
butler –
"I was admitted by a gorgeous flunkey" (60); "the same servant
appeared" (63)
Tod –
"'Tend to you presently'" (65); "the fellow worked up a most
sarcastic expression of countenance" (66); "get him his change, Tod"
(66)
Place
San Francisco
– "I was a mining-broker's clerk in San Francisco" (60)
London
– "I was picked up by a small brig which was bound for London" (60);
"when stepped ashore in London my clothes were ragged" (60)
morning – "About ten o'clock on the following morning, seedy and
hungry, I was dragging myself along Portland Place" (60)
brothers' house –
room –
"sumptuous room where a couple of elderly gentlemen were sitting
[...] They had just finished their breakfast, and the sight of the
remains of it almost overpowered me" (60)
Harris's – "the nearest cheap
eating-house" (62); "but for breakfast I stuck by Harris's humble
feeding-house" (68); "From being a poor, struggling, little
hand-to-mouth enterprise, it had become celebrated, and overcrowded
with customers" (68)
Vocabulary
plot
conflict
pace, pacing; timing
epiphany
character
characterization
plausibility
dialogue
point of view
first person narrator
reliability
humor
voice
style
tone
diction
imagery
oxymoron
metaphor
simile
understatement
overstatement
irony
symbol(s), symbolism
theme
honesty
trust
loyalty
gratitude
poverty
wealth
class
status
test, trial
speculation; betting; gambling; brokering
contrast
contradiction
transformation
rationality, irrationality
19th-century American literature
oral tradition
romance
tragedy
comedy
form
structure
Sample
Student Responses to Mark Twain's "The £1,000,000 Bank-Note"
Response 1:
Reference
Links
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- Mark Twain, "The
£1,000,000 Bank-Note," The £1,000,000
Bank-Note and Other New Stories
- "The
£1,000,000 Bank-Note," adapted by Bryony Lavery,
Saturday
Drama, BBC Radio 4 (2011 radio dramatization,
56:39 min.)
- Ricki Morgan, "Mark
Twain's Money Imagery in 'The £1,000,000 Bank-Note
and "The $30,000 Bequest," Mark Twain
Journal 19.1 (1977–1978)
- Michael E. Cafferky, "Business
Managers in Mark Twain's 'The £1,000,000 Bank-Note,'"
Mark Twain Journal 53.1 (2015)
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Media
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- Mark Twain: Father of American
Literature, History (2015; 3:21 min.)
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- "Mark Twain," TFG Film and Tape (1909
Edison film digitally restored; 3:30 min.)
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Reference
Twain,
Mark. “The £1,000,000 Bank-Note.” 1893. Collected Tales, Sketches,
Speeches, and Essays 1891–1910. New York: Library of America,
1992. 60–80. Print.
Further Reading
Twain, Mark. The Complete Humorous Sketches and Tales of Mark Twain.
Ed. Charles Neider. Illus. Mark Twain. Garden City, NY: Hanover House, 1961.
Print.
Twain, Mark. Autobiography of Mark Twain. Vol. 1. Ed. Harriet Elinor
Smith. Berkeley: U of California P, 2010. Print.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. New York: Dell, 1973.
Print.
Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Ed. Peter Coveney.
London: Penguin, 1966. Print.
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Last updated August 25, 2017