The £1,000,000 Bank-Note by Mark Twain

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?

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)

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)

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)

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.