Mark Twain

The $30,000 Bequest and other short stories Mark Twain

Lakeside was a pleasant little town of five or six thousand inhabitants, and a rather pretty one, too, as towns go in the Far West. It had church accommodations for thirty-five thousand, which is the way of the Far West and the South, where everybody is religious, and where each of the Protestant sects is represented and has a plant of its own. Rank was unknown in Lakeside-unconfessed, anyway; everybody knew everybody and his dog, and a sociable friendliness was the prevailing atmosphere. Saladin Foster was book-keeper in the principal store, and the only high-salaried man of his profession in Lakeside. He was thirty-five years old, now; he had served that store for fourteen years; he had begun in his marriage-week at four hundred dollars a year, and had climbed steadily up, a hundred dollars a year, for four years; from that time forth his wage had remained eight hundred-a handsome figure indeed, and everybody conceded that he was worth it. His wife, Electra, was a capable helpmeet, although-like himself- a dreamer of dreams and a private dabbler in romance. The first thing she did, after her marriage-child as she was, aged only nineteen- was to buy an acre of ground on the edge of the town, and pay down the cash for it-twenty-five dollars, all her fortune. Saladin had less, by fifteen. She instituted a vegetable garden there, got it farmed on shares by the nearest neighbor, and made it pay her a hundred per cent. a year.