CHAPTER 21

Doom

He is useless on top of the ground; he ought to be under it,

inspiring the cabbages.

—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

APRIL 1. This is the day upon which we are reminded of what

we are on the other three hundred and sixty-four.

—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

Wilson put on enough clothes for business purposes and went

to work under a high pressure of steam. He was awake all over.

All sense of weariness had been swept away by the invigorating

refreshment of the great and hopeful discovery which he had made.

He made fine and accurate reproductions of a number of his

“records,” and then enlarged them on a scale of ten to one with

his pantograph. He did these pantograph enlargements on sheets

of white cardboard, and made each individual line of the

bewildering maze of whorls or curves or loops which consisted of

the “pattern” of a “record” stand out bold and black by

reinforcing it with ink. To the untrained eye the collection of

delicate originals made by the human finger on the glass plates

looked about alike; but when enlarged ten times they resembled

the markings of a block of wood that has been sawed across the

grain, and the dullest eye could detect at a glance, and at a

distance of many feet, that no two of the patterns were alike.

When Wilson had at last finished his tedious and difficult work,

he arranged his results according to a plan in which a

progressive order and sequence was a principal feature; then he

added to the batch several pantograph enlargements which he had

made from time to time in bygone years.

The night was spent and the day well advanced now. By the

time he had snatched a trifle of breakfast, it was nine o’clock,

and the court was ready to begin its sitting. He was in his

place twelve minutes later with his “records.”

Tom Driscoll caught a slight glimpse of the records,

and nudged his nearest friend and said, with a wink,

“Pudd’nhead’s got a rare eye to business—thinks that as long as

he can’t win his case it’s at least a noble good chance to advertise

his window palace decorations without any expense.” Wilson was

informed that his witnesses had been delayed, but would arrive

presently; but he rose and said he should probably not have

occasion to make use of their testimony. [An amused murmur ran

through the room: “It’s a clean backdown! he gives up without

hitting a lick!”] Wilson continued: “I have other testimony—

and better. [This compelled interest, and evoked murmurs of

surprise that had a detectable ingredient of disappointment in them.]

If I seem to be springing this evidence upon the court,

I offer as my justification for this, that I did not discover its

existence until late last night, and have been engaged in

examining and classifying it ever since, until half an hour ago.

I shall offer it presently; but first I with to say a few

preliminary words.

“May it please the court, the claim given the front place,

the claim most persistently urged, the claim most strenuously and

I may even say aggressively and defiantly insisted upon by the

prosecution is this—that the person whose hand left the

bloodstained fingerprints upon the handle of the Indian knife is

the person who committed the murder.” Wilson paused, during

several moments, to give impressiveness to what he was about to say,

and then added tranquilly, “WE GRANT THAT CLAIM.”

It was an electrical surprise. No one was prepared for such

an admission. A buzz of astonishment rose on all sides,

and people were heard to intimate that the overworked lawyer had

lost his mind. Even the veteran judge, accustomed as he was to legal

ambushes and masked batteries in criminal procedure, was not sure

that his ears were not deceiving him, and asked counsel what it

was he had said. Howard’s impassive face betrayed no sign,

but his attitude and bearing lost something of their careless

confidence for a moment. Wilson resumed:

“We not only grant that claim, but we welcome it and

strongly endorse it. Leaving that matter for the present,

we will now proceed to consider other points in the case which we

propose to establish by evidence, and shall include that one in

the chain in its proper place.”

He had made up his mind to try a few hardy guesses, in

mapping out his theory of the origin and motive of the murder—

guesses designed to fill up gaps in it—guesses which could help

if they hit, and would probably do no harm if they didn’t.

“To my mind, certain circumstances of the case before the

court seem to suggest a motive for the homicide quite different

from the one insisted on by the state. It is my conviction that

the motive was not revenge, but robbery. It has been urged that

the presence of the accused brothers in that fatal room,

just after notification that one of them must take the life of

Judge Driscoll or lose his own the moment the parties should meet,

clearly signifies that the natural of self-preservation moved my

clients to go there secretly and save Count Luigi by destroying

his adversary.

“Then why did they stay there, after the deed was done?

Mrs. Pratt had time, although she did not hear the cry for help,

but woke up some moments later, to run to that room—and there

she found these men standing and making no effort to escape.

If they were guilty, they ought to have been running out of the

house at the same time that she was running to that room.

If they had had such a strong instinct toward self-preservation as

to move them to kill that unarmed man, what had become of it now,

when it should have been more alert than ever. Would any of us

have remained there? Let us not slander our intelligence to that degree.

“Much stress has been laid upon the fact that the accused

offered a very large reward for the knife with which this murder

was done; that no thief came forward to claim that extraordinary

reward; that the latter fact was good circumstantial evidence

that the claim that the knife had been stolen was a vanity and a

fraud; that these details taken in connection with the memorable

and apparently prophetic speech of the deceased concerning that

knife, and the finally discovery of that very knife in the fatal

room where no living person was found present with the

slaughtered man but the owner of the knife and his brother, form

an indestructible chain of evidence which fixed the crime upon

those unfortunate strangers.

“But I shall presently ask to be sworn, and shall testify

that there was a large reward offered for the THIEF, also;

and it was offered secretly and not advertised; that this fact was

indiscreetly mentioned—or at least tacitly admitted—in what was

supposed to be safe circumstances, but may NOT have been.

The thief may have been present himself. [Tom Driscoll had been

looking at the speaker, but dropped his eyes at this point.]

In that case he would retain the knife in his possession, not daring

to offer it for sale, or for pledge in a pawnshop. [There was a

nodding of heads among the audience by way of admission that this

was not a bad stroke.] I shall prove to the satisfaction of the

jury that there WAS a person in Judge Driscoll’s room several

minutes before the accused entered it. [This produced a strong

sensation; the last drowsy head in the courtroom roused up now,

and made preparation to listen.] If it shall seem necessary,

I will prove by the Misses Clarkson that they met a veiled person—

ostensibly a woman—coming out of the back gate a few minutes

after the cry for help was heard. This person was not a woman,

but a man dressed in woman’s clothes.” Another sensation.

Wilson had his eye on Tom when he hazarded this guess, to see

what effect it would produce. He was satisfied with the result,

and said to himself, “It was a success—he’s hit!”

The object of that person in that house was robbery, not

murder. It is true that the safe was not open, but there was an

ordinary cashbox on the table, with three thousand dollars in it.

It is easily supposable that the thief was concealed in the

house; that he knew of this box, and of its owner’s habit of

counting its contents and arranging his accounts at night—if he

had that habit, which I do not assert, of course—that he tried

to take the box while its owner slept, but made a noise and was

seized, and had to use the knife to save himself from capture;

and that he fled without his booty because he heard help coming.

“I have now done with my theory, and will proceed to the

evidences by which I propose to try to prove its soundness.”

Wilson took up several of his strips of glass. When the audience

recognized these familiar mementos of Pudd’nhead’s old time

childish “puttering” and folly, the tense and funereal interest

vanished out of their faces, and the house burst into volleys of

relieving and refreshing laughter, and Tom chirked up and joined

in the fun himself; but Wilson was apparently not disturbed.

He arranged his records on the table before him, and said:

“I beg the indulgence of the court while I make a few

remarks in explanation of some evidence which I am about to

introduce, and which I shall presently ask to be allowed to

verify under oath on the witness stand. Every human being

carries with him from his cradle to his grave certain physical

marks which do not change their character, and by which he can

always be identified—and that without shade of doubt or question.

These marks are his signature, his physiological

autograph, so to speak, and this autograph can not be counterfeited,

nor can he disguise it or hide it away, nor can it

become illegible by the wear and mutations of time.

This signature is not his face—age can change that beyond

recognition; it is not his hair, for that can fall out; it is not

his height, for duplicates of that exist; it is not his form,

for duplicates of that exist also, whereas this signature is each

man’s very own—there is no duplicate of it among the swarming

populations of the globe! [The audience were interested once more.]

“This autograph consists of the delicate lines or

corrugations with which Nature marks the insides of the hands and

the soles of the feet. If you will look at the balls of your fingers—

you that have very sharp eyesight—you will observe that

these dainty curving lines lie close together, like those that

indicate the borders of oceans in maps, and that they form

various clearly defined patterns, such as arches, circles,

long curves, whorls, etc., and that these patters differ on the

different fingers. [Every man in the room had his hand up to the

light now, and his head canted to one side, and was minutely

scrutinizing the balls of his fingers; there were whispered

ejaculations of “Why, it’s so—I never noticed that before!”]

The patterns on the right hand are not the same as those on the left.

[Ejaculations of “Why, that’s so, too!”] Taken finger for finger,

your patterns differ from your neighbor’s. [Comparisons

were made all over the house—even the judge and jury were

absorbed in this curious work.] The patterns of a twin’s right

hand are not the same as those on his left. One twin’s patters

are never the same as his fellow twin’s patters—the jury will

find that the patterns upon the finger balls of the twins’ hands

follow this rule. [An examination of the twins’ hands was begun at once.]

You have often heard of twins who were so exactly

alike that when dressed alike their own parents could not tell them apart.

Yet there was never a twin born in to this world

that did not carry from birth to death a sure identifier in this

mysterious and marvelous natal autograph. That once known to you,

his fellow twin could never personate him and deceive you.”

Wilson stopped and stood silent. Inattention dies a quick

and sure death when a speaker does that. The stillness gives

warning that something is coming. All palms and finger balls

went down now, all slouching forms straightened, all heads came up,

all eyes were fastened upon Wilson’s face. He waited yet one, two,

three moments, to let his pause complete and perfect

its spell upon the house; then, when through the profound hush he

could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, he put out his

hand and took the Indian knife by the blade and held it aloft

where all could see the sinister spots upon its ivory handle;

then he said, in a level and passionless voice:

“Upon this haft stands the assassin’s natal autograph,

written in the blood of that helpless and unoffending old man who

loved you and whom you all loved. There is but one man in the

whole earth whose hand can duplicate that crimson sign”—

he paused and raised his eyes to the pendulum swinging back and forth—

“and please God we will produce that man in this room

before the clock strikes noon!”

Stunned, distraught, unconscious of its own movement, the

house half rose, as if expecting to see the murderer appear at

the door, and a breeze of muttered ejaculations swept the place.

“Order in the court!—sit down!” This from the sheriff. He was obeyed,

and quiet reigned again. Wilson stole a glance at Tom,

and said to himself, “He is flying signals of distress now; even

people who despise him are pitying him; they think this is a hard

ordeal for a young fellow who has lost his benefactor by so cruel

a stroke—and they are right.” He resumed his speech:

“For more than twenty years I have amused my compulsory

leisure with collecting these curious physical signatures in this town.

At my house I have hundreds upon hundreds of them.

Each and every one is labeled with name and date; not labeled the

next day or even the next hour, but in the very minute that the

impression was taken. When I go upon the witness stand I will

repeat under oath the things which I am now saying. I have the

fingerprints of the court, the sheriff, and every member of the jury.

There is hardly a person in this room, white or black,

whose natal signature I cannot produce, and not one of them can

so disguise himself that I cannot pick him out from a multitude

of his fellow creatures and unerringly identify him by his hands.

And if he and I should live to be a hundred I could still do it.

[The interest of the audience was steadily deepening now.]

“I have studied some of these signatures so much that I know

them as well as the bank cashier knows the autograph of his

oldest customer. While I turn my back now, I beg that several

persons will be so good as to pass their fingers through their hair,

and then press them upon one of the panes of the window

near the jury, and that among them the accused may set THEIR

finger marks. Also, I beg that these experimenters, or others,

will set their fingers upon another pane, and add again the marks

of the accused, but not placing them in the same order or

relation to the other signatures as before—for, by one chance in

a million, a person might happen upon the right marks by pure guesswork,

ONCE, therefore I wish to be tested twice.”

He turned his back, and the two panes were quickly covered

with delicately lined oval spots, but visible only to such

persons as could get a dark background for them—the foliage of a tree,

outside, for instance. Then upon call, Wilson went to the

window, made his examination, and said:

“This is Count Luigi’s right hand; this one, three

signatures below, is his left. Here is Count Angelo’s right;

down here is his left. How for the other pane: here and here

are Count Luigi’s, here and here are his brother’s.” He faced about.

“Am I right?”

A deafening explosion of applause was the answer.

The bench said:

“This certainly approaches the miraculous!”

Wilson turned to the window again and remarked,

pointing with his finger:

“This is the signature of Mr. Justice Robinson. [Applause.]

This, of Constable Blake. [Applause.] This of John Mason, juryman.

[Applause.] This, of the sheriff. [Applause.]

I cannot name the others, but I have them all at home, named and dated,

and could identify them all by my fingerprint records.”

He moved to his place through a storm of applause—which the

sheriff stopped, and also made the people sit down, for they were

all standing and struggling to see, of course. Court, jury,

sheriff, and everybody had been too absorbed in observing

Wilson’s performance to attend to the audience earlier.

“Now then,” said Wilson, “I have here the natal autographs

of the two children—thrown up to ten times the natural size by

the pantograph, so that anyone who can see at all can tell the

markings apart at a glance. We will call the children A and B.

Here are A’s finger marks, taken at the age of five months.

Here they are again taken at seven months. [Tom started.]

They are alike, you see. Here are B’s at five months, and also at

seven months. They, too, exactly copy each other, but the patterns

are quite different from A’s, you observe. I shall refer to these

again presently, but we will turn them face down now.

“Here, thrown up ten sizes, are the natal autographs of the

two persons who are here before you accused of murdering Judge Driscoll.

I made these pantograph copies last night, and will so

swear when I go upon the witness stand. I ask the jury to

compare them with the finger marks of the accused upon the

windowpanes, and tell the court if they are the same.”

He passed a powerful magnifying glass to the foreman.

One juryman after another took the cardboard and the glass

and made the comparison. Then the foreman said to the judge:

“Your honor, we are all agreed that they are identical.”

Wilson said to the foreman:

“Please turn that cardboard face down, and take this one,

and compare it searchingly, by the magnifier, with the fatal

signature upon the knife handle, and report your finding to the court.”

Again the jury made minute examinations, and again reported:

“We find them to be exactly identical, your honor.”

Wilson turned toward the counsel for the prosecution,

and there was a clearly recognizable note of warning in his voice

when he said:

“May it please the court, the state has claimed, strenuously

and persistently, that the bloodstained fingerprints upon that

knife handle were left there by the assassin of Judge Driscoll.

You have heard us grant that claim, and welcome it.” He turned

to the jury: “Compare the fingerprints of the accused with the

fingerprints left by the assassin—and report.”

The comparison began. As it proceeded, all movement and all

sound ceased, and the deep silence of an absorbed and waiting

suspense settled upon the house; and when at last the words came,

“THEY DO NOT EVEN RESEMBLE,” a thundercrash of applause followed

and the house sprang to its feet, but was quickly repressed by

official force and brought to order again. Tom was altering his

position every few minutes now, but none of his changes brought

repose nor any small trifle of comfort. When the house’s

attention was become fixed once more, Wilson said gravely,

indicating the twins with a gesture:

“These men are innocent—I have no further concern with them.

[Another outbreak of applause began, but was promptly checked.]

We will now proceed to find the guilty. [Tom’s eyes

were starting from their sockets—yes, it was a cruel day for the

bereaved youth, everybody thought.] We will return to the infant

autographs of A and B. I will ask the jury to take these large

pantograph facsimilies of A’s marked five months and seven months.

Do they tally?”

The foreman responded: “Perfectly.”

“Now examine this pantograph, taken at eight months,

and also marked A. Does it tally with the other two?”

The surprised response was:

“NO—THEY DIFFER WIDELY!”

“You are quite right. Now take these two pantographs of B’s

autograph, marked five months and seven months. Do they tally

with each other?”

“Yes—perfectly.”

“Take this third pantograph marked B, eight months.

Does it tally with B’s other two?”

“BY NO MEANS!”

“Do you know how to account for those strange discrepancies?

I will tell you. For a purpose unknown to us, but probably a

selfish one, somebody changed those children in the cradle.”

This produced a vast sensation, naturally; Roxana was

astonished at this admirable guess, but not disturbed by it.

To guess the exchange was one thing, to guess who did it quite another.

Pudd’nhead Wilson could do wonderful things, no doubt,

but he couldn’t do impossible ones. Safe? She was perfectly safe.

She smiled privately.

“Between the ages of seven months and eight months those

children were changed in the cradle”—he made one of this effect-collecting pauses, and added—”and the person who did it is in

this house!”

Roxy’s pulses stood still! The house was thrilled as with

an electric shock, and the people half rose as if to seek a

glimpse of the person who had made that exchange. Tom was

growing limp; the life seemed oozing out of him. Wilson resumed:

“A was put into B’s cradle in the nursery; B was transferred

to the kitchen and became a Negro and a slave [Sensation—

confusion of angry ejaculations]—but within a quarter of an hour

he will stand before you white and free! [Burst of applause,

checked by the officers.] From seven months onward until now,

A has still been a usurper, and in my finger record he bears B’s name.

Here is his pantograph at the age of twelve.

Compare it with the assassin’s signature upon the knife handle.

Do they tally?”

The foreman answered:

“TO THE MINUTEST DETAIL!”

Wilson said, solemnly:

“The murderer of your friend and mine—York Driscoll of the

generous hand and the kindly spirit—sits in among you.

Valet de Chambre, Negro and slave—falsely called Thomas a Becket Driscoll

—make upon the window the fingerprints that will hang you!”

Tom turned his ashen face imploring toward the speaker, made

some impotent movements with his white lips, then slid limp and

lifeless to the floor.

Wilson broke the awed silence with the words:

“There is no need. He has confessed.”

Roxy flung herself upon her knees, covered her face with her

hands, and out through her sobs the words struggled:

“De Lord have mercy on me, po’ misasble sinner dat I is!”

The clock struck twelve.

The court rose; the new prisoner, handcuffed, was removed.

CONCLUSION

It is often the case that the man who can’t tell a lie

thinks he is the best judge of one.

—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

OCTOBER 12, THE DISCOVERY. It was wonderful to find America,

but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

—Pudd’nhead Wilson’s Calendar

The town sat up all night to discuss the amazing events of

the day and swap guesses as to when Tom’s trial would begin.

Troop after troop of citizens came to serenade Wilson,

and require a speech, and shout themselves hoarse over every

sentence that fell from his lips—for all his sentences were golden,

now, all were marvelous. His long fight against hard luck and

prejudice was ended; he was a made man for good.

And as each of these roaring gangs of enthusiasts marched away,

some remorseful member of it was quite sure to raise his

voice and say:

“And this is the man the likes of us have called a

pudd’nhead for more than twenty years. He has resigned from that

position, friends.”

“Yes, but it isn’t vacant—we’re elected.”

The twins were heroes of romance, now, and with

rehabilitated reputations. But they were weary of Western

adventure, and straightway retired to Europe.

Roxy’s heart was broken. The young fellow upon whom she had

inflicted twenty-three years of slavery continued the false

heir’s pension of thirty-five dollars a month to her, but her

hurts were too deep for money to heal; the spirit in her eye was

quenched, her martial bearing departed with it, and the voice of

her laughter ceased in the land. In her church and its affairs

she found her only solace.

The real heir suddenly found himself rich and free, but in a

most embarrassing situation. He could neither read nor write,

and his speech was the basest dialect of the Negro quarter.

His gait, his attitudes, his gestures, his bearing, his laugh—

all were vulgar and uncouth; his manners were the manners of a slave.

Money and fine clothes could not mend these defects or cover them up;

they only made them more glaring and the more pathetic.

The poor fellow could not endure the terrors of the white man’s parlor,

and felt at home and at peace nowhere but in the kitchen.

The family pew was a misery to him, yet he could nevermore enter

into the solacing refuge of the “nigger gallery”—that was closed

to him for good and all. But we cannot follow his curious fate further—

that would be a long story.

The false heir made a full confession and was sentenced to

imprisonment for life. But now a complication came up.

The Percy Driscoll estate was in such a crippled shape when its

owner died that it could pay only sixty percent of its great

indebtedness, and was settled at that rate. But the creditors

came forward now, and complained that inasmuch as through an

error for which THEY were in no way to blame the false heir was

not inventoried at the time with the rest of the property, great

wrong and loss had thereby been inflicted upon them.

They rightly claimed that “Tom” was lawfully their property and had

been so for eight years; that they had already lost sufficiently

in being deprived of his services during that long period, and

ought not to be required to add anything to that loss; that if he

had been delivered up to them in the first place, they would have

sold him and he could not have murdered Judge Driscoll; therefore

it was not that he had really committed the murder, the guilt lay

with the erroneous inventory. Everybody saw that there was

reason in this. Everybody granted that if “Tom” were white and

free it would be unquestionably right to punish him—it would be

no loss to anybody; but to shut up a valuable slave for life—

that was quite another matter.

As soon as the Governor understood the case, he pardoned Tom at once,

and the creditors sold him down the river.

–––––––––––––––––––––—

Author’s Note to THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS

A man who is not born with the novel-writing gift has a

troublesome time of it when he tries to build a novel.

I know this from experience. He has no clear idea of his story;

in fact he has no story. He merely has some people in his mind,

and an incident or two, also a locality, and he trusts he can plunge

those people into those incidents with interesting results.

So he goes to work. To write a novel? No—that is a thought which

comes later; in the beginning he is only proposing to tell a

little tale, a very little tale, a six-page tale. But as it is a

tale which he is not acquainted with, and can only find out what

it is by listening as it goes along telling itself, it is more

than apt to go on and on and on till it spreads itself into a book.

I know about this, because it has happened to me so many times.

And I have noticed another thing: that as the short tale

grows into the long tale, the original intention (or motif)

is apt to get abolished and find itself superseded by a quite

different one. It was so in the case of a magazine sketch which

I once started to write—a funny and fantastic sketch about a

prince an a pauper; it presently assumed a grave cast of its own accord,

and in that new shape spread itself out into a book.

Much the same thing happened with PUDD’NHEAD WILSON. I had a

sufficiently hard time with that tale, because it changed itself

from a farce to a tragedy while I was going along with it—a most

embarrassing circumstance. But what was a great deal worse was,

that it was not one story, but two stories tangled together; and

they obstructed and interrupted each other at every turn and

created no end of confusion and annoyance. I could not offer the

book for publication, for I was afraid it would unseat the

reader’s reason, I did not know what was the matter with it,

for I had not noticed, as yet, that it was two stories in one.

It took me months to make that discovery. I carried the manuscript

back and forth across the Atlantic two or three times, and read

it and studied over it on shipboard; and at last I saw where the

difficulty lay. I had no further trouble. I pulled one of the

stories out by the roots, and left the other—a kind of literary

Caesarean operation.

Would the reader care to know something about the story

which I pulled out? He has been told many a time how the born-and-trained novelist works; won’t he let me round and complete

his knowledge by telling him how the jackleg does it?

Originally the story was called THOSE EXTRAORDINARY TWINS.

I meant to make it very short. I had seen a picture of a

youthful Italian “freak”—or “freaks”—which was—or which were—

on exhibition in our cities—a combination consisting of two

heads and four arms joined to a single body and a single pair of legs—

and I thought I would write an extravagantly fantastic

little story with this freak of nature for hero—or heroes—

a silly young miss for heroine, and two old ladies and two boys for

the minor parts. I lavishly elaborated these people and their

doings, of course. But the take kept spreading along and

spreading along, and other people got to intruding themselves and

taking up more and more room with their talk and their affairs.

Among them came a stranger named Pudd’nhead Wilson, and woman

named Roxana; and presently the doings of these two pushed up

into prominence a young fellow named Tom Driscoll, whose proper

place was away in the obscure background. Before the book was

half finished those three were taking things almost entirely into

their own hands and working the whole tale as a private venture

of their own—a tale which they had nothing at all to do with, by rights.

When the book was finished and I came to look around to see

what had become of the team I had originally started out with—

Aunt Patsy Cooper, Aunt Betsy Hale, and two boys, and Rowena the

lightweight heroine—they were nowhere to be seen; they had

disappeared from the story some time or other. I hunted about

and found them—found them stranded, idle, forgotten, and

permanently useless. It was very awkward. It was awkward all

around, but more particularly in the case of Rowena, because

there was a love match on, between her and one of the twins that

constituted the freak, and I had worked it up to a blistering

heat and thrown in a quite dramatic love quarrel, wherein Rowena

scathingly denounced her betrothed for getting drunk, and scoffed

at his explanation of how it had happened, and wouldn’t listen to it,

and had driven him from her in the usual “forever” way;

and now here she sat crying and brokenhearted; for she had found that

he had spoken only the truth; that is was not he, but the other

of the freak that had drunk the liquor that made him drunk;

that her half was a prohibitionist and had never drunk a drop in his

life, and altogether tight as a brick three days in the week, was

wholly innocent of blame; and indeed, when sober, was constantly

doing all he could to reform his brother, the other half, who

never got any satisfaction out of drinking, anyway, because

liquor never affected him. Yes, here she was, stranded with that

deep injustice of hers torturing her poor torn heart.

I didn’t know what to do with her. I was as sorry for her

as anybody could be, but the campaign was over, the book was finished,

she was sidetracked, and there was no possible way of

crowding her in, anywhere. I could not leave her there,

of course; it would not do. After spreading her out so, and making

such a to-do over her affairs, it would be absolutely necessary

to account to the reader for her. I thought and thought and

studied and studied; but I arrived at nothing. I finally saw

plainly that there was really no way but one—I must simply give

her the grand bounce. It grieved me to do it, for after

associating with her so much I had come to kind of like her after

a fashion, notwithstanding things and was so nauseatingly sentimental.

Still it had to be done. So at the top of Chapter

XVII I put a “Calendar” remark concerning July the Fourth,

and began the chapter with this statistic:

“Rowena went out in the backyard 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 and Aunt Betsy Hale where they were around,

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 others,

but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if

I kept that up it would arose 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 the 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.

––––––––––––––––