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II.
Hadleyburg village woke up world-celebrated--astonished--happy--vain.
Vain beyond imagination. Its nineteen principal citizens and their wives
went about shaking hands with each other, and beaming, and smiling, and
congratulating, and saying this thing adds a new word to the
dictionary--Hadleyburg, synonym for incorruptible--destined to live
in dictionaries for ever! And the minor and unimportant citizens and
their wives went around acting in much the same way. Everybody ran to
the bank to see the gold-sack; and before noon grieved and envious crowds
began to flock in from Brixton and all neighbouring towns; and that
afternoon and next day reporters began to arrive from everywhere to
verify the sack and its history and write the whole thing up anew, and
make dashing free-hand pictures of the sack, and of Richards's house, and
the bank, and the Presbyterian church, and the Baptist church, and the
public square, and the town-hall where the test would be applied and the
money delivered; and damnable portraits of the Richardses, and Pinkerton
the banker, and Cox, and the foreman, and Reverend Burgess, and the
postmaster--and even of Jack Halliday, who was the loafing, good-natured,
no-account, irreverent fisherman, hunter, boys' friend, stray-dogs'
friend, typical "Sam Lawson" of the town. The little mean, smirking,
oily Pinkerton showed the sack to all comers, and rubbed his sleek palms
together pleasantly, and enlarged upon the town's fine old reputation for
honesty and upon this wonderful endorsement of it, and hoped and believed
that the example would now spread far and wide over the American world,
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