Enculturation
Twain explains, “It (Hadleyburg) was so proud of it, and so anxious to insure its perpetuation, that it began to teach the principles of honest dealing to its babies in the cradle, and made the like teachings the staple of their culture thenceforward through all the years devoted to their education. Also, throughout the formative years temptations were kept out of the way of the young people, so that their honesty could have every chance to harden and solidify, and become a part of their very bone.” Hadleyburg’s acculturation which commences during childhood underwrites to the perpetuation of uprightness in the new-borns. Honesty befits an influential ingredient of their culture which is sponsored by inhabitants of diverse generations.
Temptation
Twain writes, “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, “ The ‘gold sack’ is an inducement which provokes greediness in the contestants. The manifestation of the sack in the town is parallel to the enticement of Biblical Eve. The foreigner lures Mrs. Richards through a stratagem identical to the devil’s which occasioned iniquity.
