thing it was created to protect and care for went a steady
gait toward rack and ruin. There was no way to levy a tax, so the minor
officials had to resign or starve; therefore they resigned. There being
no city money, the enormous legal expenses on both sides had to be
defrayed by private subscription. But at last the people came to their
senses, and said:

"Pudd'nhead was right at the start--we ought to have hired the official
half of that human phillipene to resign; but it's too late now; some of
us haven't got anything left to hire him with."

"Yes, we have," said another citizen, "we've got this"--and he produced a
halter.

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.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Those Extraordinary Twins
by Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)

PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF JOAN OF ARC

VOLUME 1

by Mark Twain

Consider this unique and imposing distinctio