One of my enquiries was for anecdotes as regards the mistakes made by
near relatives between the twins. They are numerous, but not very varied
in character. When the twins are children, they have commonly to be
distinguished by ribbons tied round their wrist or neck; nevertheless
the one is sometimes fed, physicked, and whipped by mistake for the
other, and the description of these little domestic catastrophes is
usually given to me by the mother, in a phraseology that is somewhat
touching by reason of its seriousness. I have one case in which a doubt
remains whether the children were not changed in their bath, and the
presumed A is not really B, and _vice versa_. In another case an artist
was engaged on the portraits of twins who were between three and four
years of age; he had to lay aside his work for three weeks, and, on
resuming it, could not tell to which child the respective likenesses he
had in hand belonged. The mistakes are less numerous on the part of the
mother during the boyhood and girlhood of the twins, but almost as
frequent on the part of strangers. I have many instances of tutors being
unable to distinguish their twin pupils. Thus, two girls used regularly
to impose on their music teacher when one of them wanted a whole
holiday; they had their lessons at separate hours, and the one girl
sacrificed herself to receive two lessons on the same day, while the
other one enjoyed herself. Here is a brief and comprehensive account:
"Exactly alike in all, their schoolmasters never could tell them apart;
at dancing parties they constantly changed partners without discovery;
their close resemblance is scarcely diminished by age." The following is
a typical schoolboy anecdote: Two twins were fond of playing tricks, and
complaints were frequently made; but the boys would never own which was
the guilty one, and the complainants were never certain which of the two
he was. One head master used to say he would never flog the innocent for
the guilty, and another used to flog both. No less than nine anecdotes
have reached me of a twin seeing his or her reflection in a
looking-glass, and addressing it, in the belief it was the other twin in
person. I have many anecdotes of mistakes when the twins were nearly
grown up. Thus: "Amusing scenes occurred at college when one twin came
to visit the other; the porter on one occasion refused to let the
visitor out of the college gates, for, though they stood side by side,
he professed ignorance as to which he ought to allow to depart."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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