with this statistic:

"Rowena went out in the back yard after supper to see the fireworks and
fell down the well and got drowned."

It seemed abrupt, but I thought maybe the reader wouldn't notice it,
because I changed the subject right away to something else. Anyway it
loosened up Rowena from where she was stuck and got her out of the way,
and that was the main thing. It seemed a prompt good way of weeding
out people that had got stalled, and a plenty good enough way for those
others; so I hunted up the two boys and said "they went out back one
night to stone the cat and fell down the well and got drowned." Next
I searched around and found old Aunt Patsy Cooper and Aunt Betsy Hale
where they were aground, and said "they went out back one night to visit
the sick and fell down the well and got drowned." I was going to drown
some of the others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed
that if I kept that up it would arouse attention, and perhaps sympathy
with those people, and partly because it was not a large well and would
not hold any more anyway.

Still the story was unsatisfactory. Here was a set of new characters who
were become inordinately prominent and who persisted in remaining so to
the end; and back yonder was an older set who made a large noise and a
great to-do for a little while and then suddenly played out utterly and
fell down the well. There was a radical defect somewhere, and I must
search it out and cure it.

The defect turned out to be the one already spoken of--two stories
in one, a farce and a tragedy. So I pulled out the farce and left the
tragedy. This left the original team in, but only as mere names, not as
characters. Their prominence was wholly gone; they were not even worth
drowning; so I removed that detail. Also I took those twins apart and
made two separate men of them. They had no occasion to have foreign
names now, but it was too much trouble to remove them all through, so I
left them christened as they were and made no explanation.

CHAPTER I. THE TWINS AS THEY REALLY WERE

The conglomerate twins were brought on the stage in Chapter I of the
original extravaganza. Aunt Patsy Cooper has received their letter
applying for board and lodging, and Rowena, her daughter, insane with
joy, is begging for a hearing of it:

"Well, set down then, and be quiet a minute and don't fly around so; it
fairly makes me tired to see you. It starts off so: 'HONORED MADAM'--"

"I like