{"product_id":"2940012484727","title":"THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS","description":"Contents\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER I.      THE TWINS AS THEY REALLY WERE\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER II.     MA COOPER GETS ALL MIXED UP\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER III.    ANGELO IS BLUE\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER IV.     SUPERNATURAL CHRONOMETRY\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER V.      GUILT AND INNOCENCE FINELY BLENT\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER VI.     THE AMAZING DUEL\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER VII.    LUIGI DEFIES GALEN\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER VIII.   BAPTISM OF THE BETTER HALF\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER IX.     THE DRINKLESS DRUNK\u003cbr\u003e     CHAPTER X.      SO THEY HANGED LUIGI\u003cbr\u003e     FINAL REMARKS.  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a troublesome time\u003cbr\u003eof it when he tries to build a novel. I know this from experience. He\u003cbr\u003ehas no clear idea of his story; in fact he has no story. He merely has\u003cbr\u003esome people in his mind, and an incident or two, also a locality. He\u003cbr\u003eknows these people, he knows the selected locality, and he trusts\u003cbr\u003ethat he can plunge those people into those incidents with interesting\u003cbr\u003eresults. So he goes to work. To write a novel? No--that is a thought\u003cbr\u003ewhich comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a\u003cbr\u003elittle tale; a very little tale; a six-page tale. But as it is a tale\u003cbr\u003ewhich he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what it is by\u003cbr\u003elistening as it goes along telling itself, it is more than apt to go\u003cbr\u003eon and on and on till it spreads itself into a book. I know about this,\u003cbr\u003ebecause it has happened to me so many times.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale grows into a\u003cbr\u003elong tale, the original intention (or motif) is apt to get abolished and\u003cbr\u003efind itself superseded by a quite different one. It was so in the\u003cbr\u003ecase of a magazine sketch which I once started to write--a funny and\u003cbr\u003efantastic sketch about a prince and a pauper; it presently assumed a\u003cbr\u003egrave cast of its own accord, and in that new shape spread itself out\u003cbr\u003einto a book. Much the same thing happened with \"Pudd'nhead Wilson.\" I\u003cbr\u003ehad a sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself\u003cbr\u003efrom a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it--a most\u003cbr\u003eembarrassing circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was, that it\u003cbr\u003ewas not one story, but two stories tangled together; and they obstructed\u003cbr\u003eand interrupted each other at every turn and created no end of confusion\u003cbr\u003eand annoyance. I could not offer the book for publication, for I was\u003cbr\u003eafraid it would unseat the reader's reason. I did not know what was the\u003cbr\u003ematter with it, for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories\u003cbr\u003ein one. It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the\u003cbr\u003emanuscript back and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and\u003cbr\u003eread it and studied over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the\u003cbr\u003edifficulty lay. I had no further trouble. I pulled one of the stories\u003cbr\u003eout by the roots, and left the other one--a kind of literary Caesarean\u003cbr\u003eoperation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWould the reader care to know something about the story which I pulled\u003cbr\u003eout? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist\u003cbr\u003eworks. Won't he let me round and complete his knowledge by telling him\u003cbr\u003ehow the jack-leg does it?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOriginally the story was called \"Those Extraordinary Twins.\" I meant to\u003cbr\u003emake it very short. I had seen a picture of a youthful Italian \"freak\"\u003cbr\u003eor \"freaks\" which was--or which were--on exhibition in our cities--a\u003cbr\u003ecombination consisting of two heads and four arms joined to a single\u003cbr\u003ebody and a single pair of legs--and I thought I would write an\u003cbr\u003eextravagantly fantastic little story with this freak of nature for\u003cbr\u003ehero--or heroes--a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and\u003cbr\u003etwo boys for the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people\u003cbr\u003eand their doings, of course. But the tale kept spreading along, and\u003cbr\u003espreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and taking\u003cbr\u003eup more and more room with their talk and their affairs. Among them\u003cbr\u003ecame a stranger named Pudd'nhead Wilson, and a woman named Roxana; and\u003cbr\u003epresently the doings of these two pushed up into prominence a young\u003cbr\u003efellow named Tom Driscoll, whose proper place was away in the obscure\u003cbr\u003ebackground. Before the book was half finished those three were taking\u003cbr\u003ethings almost entirely into their own hands and working the whole tale\u003cbr\u003eas a private venture of their own--a tale which they had nothing at all\u003cbr\u003eto do with, by rights.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the book was finished and I came to look around to see what had\u003cbr\u003ebecome of the team I had originally started out with--Aunt Patsy Cooper,\u003cbr\u003eAunt Betsy Hale, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight heroine--they\u003cbr\u003ewere nowhere to be seen; they had disappeared from the story some time\u003cbr\u003eor other. I hunted about and found them--found them stranded, idle,\u003cbr\u003eforgotten, and permanently useless. It was very awkward.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47157666054384,"sku":"2940012484727","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012484727_p0.jpg?v=1763569603","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012484727","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}