Gimme A Break! Mark Twain Lampoons the Horatio Alger Myth
The ideology of success—the notion that anyone could make it with enough hard work—was widely promoted
in Gilded Age America. One of its most famous proponents was the author Horatio Alger, whose novels
showed how poor boys could move from “rags to respectability” through “pluck and luck.” Between the late
1860s and his death in 1899, Alger published more than 100 of these formulaic stories about poor boys who
made good more often because of fortunate accidents than because of hard work and denial. Not all Americans,
however, bought into this ideology of success. Mark Twain’s 1879 short story, “Poor Little Stephen Girard,”
took sarcastic aim at the poor-boy-done-good theme that ran through dozens of Alger stories.
The man, who now lived in Philadelphia, when he was young and poor, entered a bank, and said, “Please, sir,
don’t you want a boy to help with work here?”
And the stately banker said, “No, little boy, I don’t want a little boy to help work here.”
The little boy, whose heart was too full to speak, chewing a piece of licorice stick he had bought with a cent
stolen from his good and religious aunt, with sobs plainly audible, and with great globules of water rolling down
his cheeks, glided silently down the marble steps of the bank.
Bending his noble form, the banker dodged behind a door, for he thought the little boy was going to throw a
stone at him. But the little boy picked up something, and stuck it in his poor but ragged jacket.
“Come here, little boy,” the bank man said, “What did you pick up?”
And the little boy replied, “A pin.”
And the bank man said, “Little boy, are you good?” and he said he was. And then the bank man said, “Excuse
me, do you go to Sunday school?” and he said he did. Then the bank man took down a pen made of pure gold,
and flowing with pure ink, and he wrote on a piece of paper, “St. Peter”; and he asked the little boy what it
stood for, and the little boy said, “Salt Peter.” Then the banker said, “No, it means Saint Peter.” The little boy
said, “Oh!”
Then the bank man, with a change of heart, hugged the little boy to his chest and the little boy said, “Oh!” again
for he squeezed him. Then the bank man took the little boy into partnership, and gave him half the profits and
all the money, and then the little boy grew up to marry the bank man’s daughter, and now all he has it all.
My uncle told me this story, and I spent six weeks in picking up pins in front of a bank. I expected the bank man
would call me in and say, “Little boy, are you good?” and I was going to say, “Yes;” and when he asked me
what “St. John” stood for, I was going to say “Salt John.” But the bank man wasn’t anxious to have a partner,
and I guess he didn’t have a daughter, for one day says he to me, “Little boy, what’s that you’re picking up?” I
said, awful timidly, “Pins.” He said, “Let’s see ‘em.” And he took ’em, and I took off my cap, all ready to go in
the bank, and become a partner, and marry his daughter. But I didn’t get an invitation. He said instead, “Those
pins belong to the bank, and if I catch you hanging around here anymore I’ll have you arrested!” Then I left,
and the mean old fellow kept the pins. Such is life as I find it.
Source:
Mark Twain, “Poor Little Stephen Girard,” in Carleton’s Popular Readings, Anna Randall-Diehl, ed., (New
York, 1879), 183–84.
Gimme A Break! Mark Twain Lampoons the Horatio Alger Myth
1. Who was Horatio Alger?
2. Describe in a sentence or two what happens in Twain’s “Poor Little Stephen Girard”.
3. Twain uses sarcasm in this tale. Who is he criticizing? Why?