What would you do with a $1,000 inheritance?

Posted November 14th, 2014 at 4:37 pm (UTC-4)
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1000dollarbillOur American Stories episode for this week is the O. Henry story, “One Thousand Dollars.” The main character, Gillian,  (spoiler alert!) gets an inheritance, $1,000.00, from his rich uncle who has died. But he is not too happy, because he knows his uncle was very rich and had “over a half a million,” according to a friend.

So our hero goes around asking his friends and people he meets in the street, “What would you do with a thousand dollars?” He gets some wild answers, ranging from sheep ranching to buying diamonds, to starting a bar.  In contrast to his uncle’s great wealth and Gillian’s small inheritance, he learns that the people who lived with his uncle each got only ten dollars. This seems like a cruel joke.

1900s-ten-dollar-legal-tender-note

Read the story to find out what he decides to do.

After you’ve read the story, you can write a comment here to let me know how you would spend the $1,000. If you’d like, you can apply the current inflation rate. When this story was written, $1,000 would go pretty far. It would be $26,315.79 in 2014 dollars.

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Dr. Jill Robbins

Jill produces TESOL-related content for VOA Learning English.

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Confessions of an English Learner is a place for you to practice your writing and share the joys and pains of learning the language. We will post a weekly prompt, to give you a chance to practice your writing and to comment on others’ writing.

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