 First US edition of The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories | |
| Author | Mark Twain |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Short story |
Publication date | 1893 |
| Pages | 4 |
"The Million Pound Bank Note" is a short story by the American author Mark Twain, published in 1893.
Henry Adams, a clerk in a San Francisco stockbroker's office, is swept out to sea while sailing one weekend. He is rescued by a ship bound for London and must work during the voyage to earn his passage, and he arrives in the city with his clothing in rags and only one dollar in his pocket. Two very rich and eccentric brothers spot him and give him an envelope with no information. Seeing money inside the envelope, Henry immediately heads for a cheap dining house and eats a meal; afterward, he discovers that the money is a single bank note for one million pounds sterling, the equivalent of $5 million in United States currency. Without knowing it at the time, Henry has become the subject of a £20,000 bet between the brothers. One believes that the mere possession of the bank note can enable a person to survive even with no other means of support, while the other feels that the holder will be unable to use it without drawing the authorities' suspicions.
Harris, the proprietor of the dining house, tells Henry not to worry about payment when Henry tries to obtain change. Henry then finds a note from one of the brothers, telling him of the bet and instructing him to return to them in 30 days with the bank note intact and unspent. If Henry fulfills these conditions and thus wins the bet for the writer, he can have any situation that he is qualified to fill. Henry realizes that he would not be easily able to exchange the bank note in the bank without being questioned about how he had come to have it, charged with theft and arrested. He would also not be able to spend it since no ordinary person would be able to change it. Finally, in desperation, Henry decides to see if he can use the note to get a cheap suit to replace his rags, similar to the way he got his meal; when he pulls out the million-pound note to pay, the store manager gives him an entire wardrobe on credit. Ultimately, he becomes a celebrity in London as the "vest pocket million-pounder" or the "vest-pocket monster", and Harris' dining house becomes so famous that Harris actually lends Henry money. Henry tries to keep his borrowings under control so that he will be able to pay everyone back over time when he gets his situation.
After 10 days of growing fame, Henry reports to the United States ambassador in London, who had been a classmate of his father's at Yale. He is invited to a dinner party that night where he meets a young British woman, Portia Langham, with whom he is instantly smitten. Flirting with her, he tells the entire story of the gentlemen and their bet, which she finds hilarious. Also at the party is a good friend of Henry's from San Francisco named Lloyd Hastings, in London to sell shares in a mine and keep any sale proceeds that exceed $1 million. He is about to return home, having been unable to find any wealthy Londoners interested in buying, but Henry offers to use his celebrity to endorse the mine in exchange for half the profits. The shares sell out by the end of the month for a total of $3 million; Henry and Lloyd each receive $1 million, but Henry does not tell Portia of his new wealth.
At the end of the month, Portia insists on going with Henry to see the brothers. Although he has fulfilled the terms of the bet and is entitled to claim a situation, he turns it down, showing them his profits from the mining deal. Portia reveals that one brother is her stepfather and the other her uncle, whereupon Henry decides that the "situation" he wants is to become her husband. The two are married, and the brothers cash in the million-pound note, have it canceled by the bank, and give it to the couple as a wedding present. [1]
The Merchant of Venice is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1596 and 1598. A merchant in Venice named Antonio defaults on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock.
The Prince and the Pauper is a novel by American author Mark Twain. It was first published in 1881 in Canada, before its 1882 publication in the United States. The novel represents Twain's first attempt at historical fiction. Set in 1547, it tells the story of two young boys who were born on the same day and are identical in appearance: Tom Canty, a pauper who lives with his abusive, alcoholic father in Offal Court off Pudding Lane in London, and Edward VI of England, son of Henry VIII of England.
Trading Places is a 1983 American comedy film directed by John Landis, with a screenplay by Timothy Harris and Herschel Weingrod. Starring Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Ralph Bellamy, Don Ameche, Denholm Elliott, and Jamie Lee Curtis, the film tells the story of an upper-class commodities broker (Aykroyd) and a poor street hustler (Murphy) whose lives cross when they are unwittingly made the subject of an elaborate bet to test how each man will perform when their life circumstances are swapped.
"The War Prayer", a short story or prose poem by Mark Twain, is a scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war. The structure of the work is simple: an unnamed country goes to war, and patriotic citizens attend a church service for soldiers who have been called up. The people call upon God to grant them victory and protect their troops. Suddenly, an "aged stranger" appears and announces that he is God's messenger. He explains to them that he is there to speak aloud the second part of their prayer for victory, the part which they have implicitly wished for but have not spoken aloud themselves: the prayer for the suffering and destruction of their enemies. What follows is a grisly depiction of hardships inflicted on war-torn nations by their conquerors. The story ends with the man being ignored.
"The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" is an 1865 short story by Mark Twain. It was his first great success as a writer and brought him national attention. The story has also been published as "Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog" and "The Notorious Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". In it, the narrator retells a story he heard from a bartender, Simon Wheeler, at the Angels Hotel in Angels Camp, California, about the gambler Jim Smiley. The narrator describes him: "If he even seen a straddle bug start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to wherever he going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that straddle bug to Mexico but what he would find out where he was bound for and how long he was on the road."
The numbers game, also known as the numbers racket, the Italian lottery, Mafia lottery or the daily number, is a form of illegal gambling or illegal lottery played mostly in poor and working-class neighborhoods in the United States, wherein a bettor attempts to pick three digits to match those that will be randomly drawn the following day. For many years the "number" has been the last three digits of "the handle", the amount race track bettors placed on race day at a major racetrack, published in racing journals and major newspapers in New York.
Pygmalion is a play by Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, named after the Greek mythological figure. It premiered at the Hofburg Theatre in Vienna on 16 October 1913 and was first presented in German on stage to the public in 1913. Its English-language premiere took place at His Majesty's Theatre in the West End in April 1914 and starred Herbert Beerbohm Tree as phonetics professor Henry Higgins and Mrs Patrick Campbell as Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle.
Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc, by the Sieur Louis de Conte is an 1896 novel by Mark Twain which recounts the life of Joan of Arc.
The Palm Beach Story is a 1942 screwball comedy film written and directed by Preston Sturges, and starring Claudette Colbert, Joel McCrea, Mary Astor and Rudy Vallée. Victor Young contributed the musical score, including a fast-paced variation of the William Tell Overture for the opening scenes. Typical of a Sturges film, the pacing and dialogue of The Palm Beach Story are very fast.
"The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg" is a piece of short fiction by Mark Twain. It first appeared in Harper's Monthly in December 1899, and was subsequently published by Harper & Brothers in the collection The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories and Sketches (1900). Some see this story "as a replay of the Garden of Eden story", and associate the corrupter of the town with Satan.
A Tramp Abroad is a work of travel literature, including a mixture of autobiography and fictional events, by American author Mark Twain, published in 1880. The book details a journey by the author, with his friend Harris, through central and southern Europe. While the stated goal of the journey is to walk most of the way, the men find themselves using other forms of transport as they traverse the continent. The book is the fourth of Mark Twain's six travel books published during his lifetime and is often thought to be an unofficial sequel to the first one, The Innocents Abroad (1869).
Kipps: The Story of a Simple Soul is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1905. It was reportedly Wells's own favourite among his works, and it has been adapted for stage, cinema and television productions, including the musical Half a Sixpence.
The Stars' Tennis Balls is a psychological thriller novel by Stephen Fry, first published in 2000. In the United States, the title was changed to Revenge. The story is a modern adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's 1844 novel The Count of Monte Cristo, which was in turn based on a contemporary legend.
A Million to Juan is a 1994 romantic comedy film starring comedian Paul Rodriguez. It was also his directorial debut. The story is a modern spin on Mark Twain's 1893 story "The Million Pound Bank Note".
The Million Pound Note is a 1954 British comedy film directed by Ronald Neame and starring Gregory Peck, Ronald Squire, Wilfrid Hyde-White and Jane Griffiths. It is based on the 1893 Mark Twain short story The Million Pound Bank Note, and is a precursor to the 1983 film Trading Places. It was shot at Pinewood Studios and on location around London. The film's sets were designed by the art directors John Box and Jack Maxsted. It was released by Rank's General Film Distributors. The American release was handled by United Artists under the alternative tile Man with a Million.
Double Dynamite is a 1951 American musical comedy film directed by Irving Cummings and starring Jane Russell, Groucho Marx, and Frank Sinatra. The film was written by Leo Rosten (story), Melville Shavelson (screenplay), Mannie Manheim, and Harry Crane.
Mummy paper is paper that is claimed to be made from the linen wrappings and other fibers from Egyptian mummies imported to America circa 1855. The existence of this paper has not been conclusively confirmed, but it has been widely discussed.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens , well known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American author and humorist. Twain is noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), which has been called the "Great American Novel," and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876). He also wrote poetry, short stories, essays, and non-fiction. His big break was "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County" (1867).
The One Million Pound Note is a 1916 Hungarian silent comedy film directed by Alexander Korda and starring Lajos Ujváry, Gyula Nagy and Aladár Ihász. It is an adaptation of Mark Twain's 1893 short story The Million Pound Bank Note.
The use of the pen name of Mark Twain first occurred in Samuel Clemens's writing while in the Nevada Territory which he had journeyed to with his brother. Clemens/Twain lived in Nevada from 1861 to 1864, and visited the area twice after leaving. Historians such as Peter Messent see Clemens's time in Nevada as "the third major formative period of Mark Twain's career" due to his encounters with "writers and humorists who would both shape and put the finishing touches on his literary art." The Routledge Encyclopedia of Mark Twain states that despite the few "disagreeable experiences" he had there, Twain "thrived in Nevada." Among those things he learned was "how far he could push a joke", a lesson learned from some "disagreeable experiences" he brought upon himself.
The full text of The Million Pound Bank Note at Wikisource
The Million Pound Banknote public domain audiobook at LibriVox