“Pudd’nhead was right at the start—we
ought to have hired the official half of that human
phillipene to resign; but it’s too late now;
some of us haven’t got anything left to hire
him with.”
“Yes, we have,” said another citizen,
“we’ve got this”—and he
produced a halter.
Many shouted: “That’s the ticket.”
But others said: “No—Count Angelo
is innocent; we mustn’t hang him.”
“Who said anything about hanging him?
We are only going to hang the other one.”
“Then that is all right—there is
no objection to that.”
So they hanged Luigi. And so ends the history
of “Those Extraordinary Twins.”
As you see, it was an extravagant sort of a tale,
and had no purpose but to exhibit that monstrous “freak”
in all sorts of grotesque lights. But when Roxy
wandered into the tale she had to be furnished with
something to do; so she changed the children in the
cradle; this necessitated the invention of a reason
for it; this, in turn, resulted in making the children
prominent personages—nothing could prevent
it of course. Their career began to take a tragic
aspect, and some one had to be brought in to help
work the machinery; so Pudd’nhead Wilson was
introduced and taken on trial. By this time
the whole show was being run by the new people and
in their interest, and the original show was become
side-tracked and forgotten; the twin-monster, and
the heroine, and the lads, and the old ladies had
dwindled to inconsequentialities and were merely in
the way. Their story was one story, the new people’s
story was another story, and there was no connection
between them, no interdependence, no kinship.
It is not practicable or rational to try to tell two
stories at the same time; so I dug out the farce and
left the tragedy.
The reader already knew how the expert works; he knows
now how the other kind do it.
Mark Twain.
