THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS

Contents

CHAPTER I. THE TWINS AS THEY REALLY WERE
CHAPTER II. MA COOPER GETS ALL MIXED UP
CHAPTER III. ANGELO IS BLUE
CHAPTER IV. SUPERNATURAL CHRONOMETRY
CHAPTER V. GUILT AND INNOCENCE FINELY BLENT
CHAPTER VI. THE AMAZING DUEL
CHAPTER VII. LUIGI DEFIES GALEN
CHAPTER VIII. BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF
CHAPTER IX. THE DRINKLESS DRUNK
CHAPTER X. SO THEY HANGED LUIGI
FINAL REMARKS.




A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time
of it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He
has no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has
some people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He
knows these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts
that he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting
results. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought
which comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a
little tale; a very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale
which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by
listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go
on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this,
because it has happened to me so many times.

And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into a
long tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and
find itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the
case of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and
fantastic sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a
grave cast of its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out
into a book. Much the same thing happened with "Pudd'nhead Wilson." I
had a sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself
from a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it--a most
embarrassing circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it
was not one story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed
and interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion
and annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was
afraid it would unseat the reader's reason. I did not know what was the
matter with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories
in one. It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the
manuscript back and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and
read it and studied over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the
difficulty lay. I had no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories
out by the roots, and left the other one--a kind of literary Caesarean
operation.

Would the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled
out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist
works. Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him
how the jack-leg does it?

Originally the story was called "Those Extraordinary Twins." I meant to
make it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian "freak"
or "freaks" which was--or which were--on exhibition in our cities--a
combination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single
body and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an
extravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for
hero--or heroes--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and
two boys for the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people
and their doings, of course. But the tale kept spreading along, and
spreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking
up more and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them
came a stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and
presently the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young
fellow named Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure
background. Before the book was half finished those three were taking
things almost entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale
as a private venture of their own--a tale which they had nothing at all
to do with, by rights.

When the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had
become of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper,
Aunt Betsy Hale, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight heroine--they
were nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time
or other. I hunted about and found them--found them stranded, idle,
forgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward.