LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 315, 16 June 1875, Page 3

LITERATURE.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY. ( Concluded .) A loud and derisive laugh from a hobbledehoy brother, and a titter from a sister, aroused her suspicions. She unclasped me, took one long searching glance at my crestfallen countenance, satisfied herself that I was not Adolphus, uttered a piercing shriek, and swooned, The situation was truly appalling. I turned and fled. Strange to say, it was at the very same town that, a month or two after the harrowing occurrence just related, I was again mistaken for some one else. This time I was not on circuit, but attending sessions, which to juniors is commonly the more lucrative performance of the two. The magistrates in that part of the world are a genial set, and every quarter sessions invite the Bar to a sumptuous spread. It was on the occasion of one of these entertainments that the event I am about to tell happened. After dinner, while we were chatting together in the drawing-room, a young fellow whom I had observed eyeing me with some appearance of interest across the mahogany, but whom I had never seen before, came up to me and said, ‘ I think we were at college together.’ * I should fancy not,’ I replied ; ‘ I must be your seniorand I named the year in which I took my degree. ‘ I was up then,’ he answered ; and I think I met you at Lloyd’s of the ‘ Hall.’ I said I knew Lloyd by sight and reputation well, but was not acquainted with him. ‘What,’ exclaimed my companion, ‘ didn’t all the ‘ Hall’ men know each other ?’ ‘ Most probably they did,’ I said ; ‘men generally do in a small college.’ ‘ How was it, then, ’ asked my friend with a triumphant air, ‘that if you were at the ‘ Hall,’ you didn’t know Lloyd ?’ ‘ But I was not at the ‘ Hall,’ ’ I said. ‘ What, do you mean to say you are not What’s-his-name of the ‘ Hall’ ? Your name is the same, at any rate.’ So here was another double ; and so far the worst of the lot. This double not only resembled me in personal appearance, but he had the same name, spelt in the same way as I spelt mine ; the same number of initials as I have, and two of them the same ; he was at the same university at about the same time that I was; and he was a member of the same learned profession. What fate there may be in store for me arising out of this extraordinary coincidence, I know not. Up to the present time, the most inconvenient result has been that produced by an unsuccessful attempt of my ambitious double to gain a seat in the legistature. I suppose I have been the recipient of as many derisive condolences from my friends upon my presumed ill luck as have been poured into the ear of the real sufferer. But to come to the last, and [in some re spects the worst, instance of my duplication and reduplication. I have actually met in the flesh one of my doubles. Whether it was Poppleton, or Adolphus, or which of the others it might be, or whether it was a new and previously undiscovered one, I can’t say ; but I undoubtedly met a double, and he and 1 knew that each was the double of the other. The hideous recontre took place at a concert, where by a strange fatality the number of my seat followed arithmetically that of his. In point of fact, I sat next to myself. I had often, of course, seen my own countenance in a glass darkly, and gone away and forgotten what maimer of man I was ; but to meet myself face to face—oh, it was a gruesome thing! I shudder whenever I recall to mind the dreadful event. The moment we looked at each other we felt that with horror that we were in every respect similar. A glance did it; a momentary look carried conviction to the mind of each of us ; and from that instant we hated each other with a perfect hatred. And yet it was strange to note how, notwithstanding the certainty each of ua felt that he was, in the

minutest particular, the double of the other, we both of us persisted in taking furtive and sidelong glances at each other, with the sole object of trying if possible to discover the minutest shade of difference. I have, unhappily for my personal appearance, a Ciceronian wart on the right-hand side of my nose ;so had my double. He was on my left, and I had consequently a full view of the right-hand side of his face. But he, not being so situated with respect to me, was uncertain whether I had a wart or no. The possibility that, by some chance, the extraordinary resemblance between us might fail in the matter of the wart provoked an extravagant anxiety on the part of my double to catch a glimpse of that side of my face on which the wart, if there, ought to be; but, guessing what was passing in his mind, I kept it studiously averted from him. The efforts that man made to see round the back of my head without attracting notice, and the subterfuges he made use of in order to induce me to turn my face, would have been ludicrous if the almost supernatural likeness that subsisted between us had not rendered the whole occurrence so unspeakably ghastly. Not only did we ourselves perceive this remarkably identity of dress (for we were both in evening costume), form, age, manners, and features, but it attracted also the notice of the performers whom we faced, for we were in the front row of the audience. They all stared at us as if we had been a couple of imitation and not real men ; and I heard the prrmo tenore say to the principal lady vocalist, in a whispered reply to some allusion she had made to us, ‘ Yes, it’s perfectly astounding. I never saw such a likeness in my life—twins, of course.’ I suspect the double heard this remark, for he turned and glared at me like some fiend. I was more composed, but lam convinced, from my own sentiments, that the most bloodthirsty designs were nurtured in our respective bosoms. Each of us felt the existence of the other to be an injury to him, and would have had the most exquisite pleasure in terminating it, could he have done it without imperilling his own. I thought the concert would never end, yet I was afraid to leave before my double, lest I should discover to him the wart on my nose; for I am certain, had he seen it, he would either have gone mad on the spot, or offered to do me some grievous bodily harm. Fortune, however, favoured me. When the concert was over, my double stooped to pick up the umbrella, which had fallen behind the seat. I seized my opportunity when his head was turned, slipped quickly by him, and escaped. I have never seen him since, and devoutly trust I never may. I have now briefly described some of the consequences which are likely to follow, and which do follow, the possession of a type of figure and countenance common to oneself and to others of one’s fellow creatures. For years I was of the opinion that the drawbacks which, as my readers have seen, attend this unhappy state of things were compensated by no redeeming feature. I have, however, recently had occasion to modify that view, and I now hope that what has so long been a source of vexation to me may ultimately turn out a mine of untold wealth. When I first began to suspect that Nature, when she moulded my manly proportions, had copied a model with the form of which she must have become by constant practice pretty familiar, I felt disposed to consider the matter in the light of an odd but somewhat laughable freak over which it was allowable for the victim to make merry at their own expense. But when one case of mistaken identity followed the other in rapid succession, the subject assumed a more serious aspect. An intimate friend, to whom I had been relating some of the instances recorded above, struck the first note of alarm, a note which vibrated through my susceptible frame for months afterwards. ‘ Ah,’ he said, in the easy, agreeable, and self-satisfied tones of the man who regards with complacency the possible misfortunes of his neighbours, 1 you’ll be hanged by mistake some of these days, dashed if you won’t. Capital joke that will be—capital. Do you see? ’ And the unfeeling soul chuckled with glee over the wretched pun. ‘ Hanged by mistake,’ I reflected. What an uncomfortable position to be placed in, and yet how likely to occur in my case! I had often dreamed that I was going to be hanged, and felt uncommonly relieved on waking to find that I was still alive and free; and here was the ghastly suggestion that there was a chance, and not such a very remote one, of these hideous dreams one day coming true. Do what I would, I could not divest myself of the notion that eventually it might be my lot to expiate on the scaffold the crime of one of my many doubles. For a length of time this gloomy side of the subject was ever present to my mind; and whereas I had once perused with a kind of relish the appetising accounts of murders, which relieved the otherwise dull columns of the daily press, I now shunned all such as if they had been so many plague spots, and even ceased to scan with my accustomed interest the reports of minor offences, and gloat over with my wonted zest the cases of hideous atrocity and revolting cruelty, lest by the death of the victims the perpetrators might have rendered themselves liable to be put on their trial for the capital crime. What would have been the result had I continued long in this frame of mind, I cannot say; but it was while the anticipations I was forming as to the fate which might befall me in the future were at their gloomiest, that a prospect of a far more agreeable character was presented to me in the career then just brought prominent!} before the public of the notorious philosopher, temporarily under a cloud, the question of whose identity afterwards engaged for so many months the attention of our courts of law. If I might one day suffer for the deeds of my doubles, was there not also, I asked myself, a probability that I might also benefit by them? Of course there was. Poppleton, for all I know, may be rolling in riches; Adolphus may be oppressed with the magnitude of his possessions. Yet if either were to be taken with a sudden desire to travel, to wander over the face of the earth, and were to be lost (the most natural result of wandering), and were to be advertised for under a description which would infallibly resemble me in every particular, how easily might I step into the place of the lost heir ! Soothed, then, by such reflections as these, I cease to regret that Nature should have turned out so many duplicates of me, and dwell in the hope that one of them will atone for the annoyance his existence and theirs have caused me, by gracefully secluding himself from a society which he may rest assured will not miss him, and permitting me to enjoy whatever advantages way have been attached to his lot in life.