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.”
FINAL REMARKS
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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