So, Mark Twain, Americana novelist 1800s, he wrote a short story that's little known.

It's called The Man Who Corrupted Hadleyburg.

Hadleyburg was this town that self-proclaimed was self-righteous.

They were like, we are beyond and above moral corruption. We are a good

town. We're like other towns. There's no crime. There's no lying. There's no pride. We are,

we are like walking in ways of righteousness. That's what Hadleyburg was known of,

according to Twain, for three generations. Well, the stranger, as Twain introduces, sets a trap or a petri dish in which

we would see, the reader would see, are they righteous? Are they true to what they say? Are they

morally incorruptible? So the stranger drops off a bag of gold coins to the town hall.

And he puts a secret note on the inside and he says,

The man who did me a good deed some years ago will know the secret phrase that is within the bag of the gold coins.

And thus, it was laid for the town to come and say, I was the person.

I did the good deeds. And here's the secret phrase. And no less than 20 families of Hadleyburg,

this town of righteousness, shows up at the night, at the town hall to claim the bag

of the reward of the gold coins because they knew the secret phrase. And so, the man who corrupted

Hadleyburg was not the stranger who introduced the gold coins and the reward. The man who corrupted Hadleyburg

were these 20 families who were willing to corrupt their own hearts out of greed, materialism,

pride, division, brother against brother, to say, that's mine. And it's mine because of what

I did. And they were all systematically exposed before the whole town. And this incorruptible

town was shown to be corruptible, not because of the reward, but because of what was within.

All of that was within them. They had this veneer of righteousness. It was self-righteousness. It wasn't reality. It was just a portrayal of that

reality. And when given the opportunity, just a simple opportunity of a simple reward,

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