een, he felt sorry. He
began to reflect--for reflection is the beginning of reform. It is only
by reflecting on some crime you have committed, that you are
"vaccinated" against committing it again.

So Mark began to reflect. And his reflections were of this nature: What
ought a boy to do who has stolen a green water-melon? What would George
Washington, who never told a lie, have done? He decided that the only
real, right thing for any boy to do, who has stolen a water-melon of
that class, is to make restitution. It is his duty to restore it to its
rightful owner. So rising up, spiritually strengthened and refreshed by
his noble resolution, Mark restored the water--melon--what there was
left of it--to the farmer and--made the farmer give him a ripe one in
its place! Thus he clinched the "moral" of this story, so quaint and so
ingenious; and concluded that only in some such way as this could one be
fortified against further commission of crime. Only thus could one
become morally perfect!

Here, as in countless other places, Mark Twain throws over his ethical
suggestion--a suggestion, by contrast, of the very converse of his
literal words--the veil of paradox and exaggeration, of incongruity,
fantasy, light irony. Yet beneath this outer covering of art there is
a serious meaning that, like murder, will out. If demonstration were
needed that Mark Twain is sealed of the tribe of moralists, that is
amply supplied by that masterpiece, that triumph of invention,
construction, and originality, 'The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg'.
Here is a pure morality, daring in the extreme and incredibly original
in a world perpetually reiterating a saying already thousands of years
old, to the effect that there is nothing new under the sun. It is a
deliberate emendation of that invocation in the Lord's Prayer "Lead us
(not) into temptation." The shrieking irony of this trenchant parable,
its cynicism and heartlessness, would make of it an unendurable
criticism of human life--were it accepted literally as a representation
of society. In essence it is a morality pure and simple, animated not
only by its brilliantly original ethical suggestion, but also by its
illuminating reflection of human nature and its graciously relieving
humour. In that exultant letter which the _Diabolus ex machina_ wrote
to the betrayed villagers, he sneers at their old and lofty reputation
for honesty--that reputation of which they were so inordinately