hard. But Dr.
Wigan does not go into these niceties of this subject, and I failed. It
was then that, on my wife's suggestion, I resolved to look out for a
Double.

I was, at first, singularly successful. We happened to be recreating at
Stafford Springs that summer. We rode out one day, for one of the
relaxations of that watering-place, to the great Monson Poorhouse. We
were passing through one of the large halls, when my destiny was
fulfilled!

He was not shaven. He had on no spectacles. He was dressed in a green
baize roundabout and faded blue overalls, worn sadly at the knee. But I
saw at once that he was of my height, five feet four and a half. He had
black hair, worn off by his hat. So have and have not I. He stooped in
walking. So do I. His hands were large, and mine. And--choicest gift of
Fate in all--he had, not "a strawberry-mark on his left arm," but a cut
from a juvenile brickbat over his right eye, slightly affecting the play
of that eyebrow. Reader, so have I! My fate was sealed!

A word with Mr. Holley, one of the inspectors, settled the whole thing.
It proved that this Dennis Shea was a harmless, amiable fellow, of the
class known as shiftless, who had sealed his fate by marrying a dumb
wife, who was at that moment ironing in the laundry. Before I left
Stafford, I had hired both for five years. We had applied to Judge
Pynchon, then the probate judge at Springfield, to change the name of
Dennis Shea to Frederic Ingham. We had explained to the Judge, what was
the precise truth, that an eccentric gentleman wished to adopt Dennis,
under this new name, into his family. It never occurred to him that
Dennis might be more than fourteen years old. And thus, to shorten this
preface, when we returned at night to my parsonage at Naguadavick, there
entered Mrs. Ingham, her new dumb laundress, myself, who am Mr. Frederic
Ingham, and my double, who was Mr. Frederic Ingham by as good right as
I.

O the fun we had the next morning in shaving his beard to my pattern,
cutting his hair to match mine, and teaching him how to wear and how to
take off gold-bowed spectacles! Really, they were electro-plate, and the
glass was plain (for the poor fellow's eyes were excellent). Then in
four successive afternoons I taught him four speeches. I had found these
would be quite enough for the supernumerary-Sepoy line of life, and it
was well for me they were; for though he was good-natured, he was very
shiftless, and it was, as our n