Those Extraordinary Twins — Mark Twain

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

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 Mark Twain

A man who is n 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 He knows these people he knows the selected locality and he trusts that 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 propo sing 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