The E-Sylum:  Volume 6, Number 9, March 2, 2003, Article 9

THE MILLION POUND BANK NOTE, OR "GOT CHANGE FOR THAT?"

While looking up other things your Editor came across
a Mark Twain story titled "The Million Pound Bank Note"
The Cornell University web site displays a copy of the
story as originally published in the pages of The Century
magazine in 1893. An excerpt follows

http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/sgml/moa-idx?notisid=ABP2287-0045-86

"Step in here, please."
"I was admitted by a gorgeous flunkey, and shown into a
sumptuous room where a couple of elderly gentlemen were
sitting. They sent away the servant, and made me sit down.

Those two old brothers had been having a pretty hot argument
a couple of days before, and had ended by agreeing to decide
it by a bet, which is the English way of settling everything.

You will remember that the Bank of England once issued two
notes of a million pounds each, to be used for a special purpose
connected with some public transaction with a foreign country.
For some reason or other only one of these had been used and
canceled; the other still lay in the vaults of the Bank.

Well, the brothers, chatting along, happened to get to wondering
what might be the fate of a perfectly honest and intelligent
stranger who should be turned adrift in London without a friend,
and with no money but that million-pound bank-note, and no
way to account for his being in possession of it. Brother A said
he would starve to death; Brother B said he wouldn't. Brother
A said he couldn't offer it at a bank or anywhere else, because
he would be arrested on the spot. So they went on disputing till
Brother B said he would bet twenty thousand pounds that the
man would live thirty days, any way, on that million, and keep
out of jail, too. Brother A took him up.

Brother B went down to the Bank and bought that note. Just
like an Englishman, you see; pluck to the backbone. Then he
dictated a letter, which one of his clerks wrote out in a beautiful
round hand, and then the two brothers sat at the window a
whole day watching for the right man to give it to.

They saw many honest faces go by that were not intelligent
enough; many that were intelligent, but not honest enough;
many that were both, but the possessors were not poor
enough, or, if poor enough, were not strangers. There was
always a defect, until I came along; but they agreed that I
filled the bill all around; so they elected me unanimously,
and there I was, now, waiting to know why I was called
in."

[So, dear readers - is Twain's report of the existence of
a million-pound banknote pure literary hokum, or did such
notes actually exist? -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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