e stories out by the roots, and
left the other--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 jackleg 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, and two boys, and Rowena the lightweight 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. It was awkward
all around, but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because there
was a love match on, between her and one of the twins that constituted
the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering heat and thrown in a
quite dramatic love quarrel, wherein Rowena scathingly denounced her
betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed at his explanation of how it had
happened, and wouldn't listen to it, and had driven him from her in the
usual "forever" way; and now here she sat crying and brokenhearted; for
she had found that he had spoken only the truth;