The Wrong Twin

by Harry Leon Wilson

So Wilbur began to think about things. He continued to do everything that old Porter Howgill was asked to do, to repair cars for the Mansion garage, and to be a shield and buckler to Sam Pickering in time of need. The Advance office became freshly attractive at this time, because Sam had installed a wonderful new power press to print the paper daily; for the Advance, as Sam put it, could be found ever in the van of progress.

The new press had innermost secrets of structure that were presently best known to Wilbur Cowan. No smeared small boy was required to ink its forms and no surmounting bronze eagle was reported to scream for beer when the last paper was run off. Even Dave Cowan, drifting in from out of the nowhere—in shoes properly describable as only memories of shoes—said she was a snappy little machine, and applauded his son's easy mastery of it.

So the days of Wilbur were busy days, even if he had not settled far enough down to suit either Sam Pickering, Porter Howgill—who did everything, if asked—or the First-Class Garage. And the blight put upon him by a creature as false as she was beautiful proved not to be enduring. He was able, indeed, to behold her without a tremor, save of sympathy for one compelled to endure the daily proximity of Lyman Teaford.

But the war prolonged itself as only he and Winona had felt it would, and presently it began to be hinted that a great nation, apparently unconcerned with its beginning, might eventually be compelled to a livelier interest in it. Herman Vielhaber was a publicly exposed barometer of this sentiment. At the beginning he beamed upon the world and predicted the Fatherland's speedy triumph over all the treacherous foes. When the triumph was unaccountably delayed he appeared mysterious, but not less confident. The Prussian system might involve delay, but Prussian might was none the less invincible. Herman would explain the Prussian system freely to all who cared to listen—and many did attentively—from high diplomacy to actual fighting. He left many of his hearers with a grateful relief that neutrality had been officially enjoined upon them.

Later Herman beamed less brightly as he recounted tales of German prowess. He came to exhibit a sort of indignant pity for the Fatherland, into whose way so many obstacles were being inopportunely thrown. He compared Germany to a wounded deer that ravenous dogs were seeking to bring down, but his predictions of her ultimate victory were not less confident. Minna Vielhaber wept back of the bar at Herman's affecting picture of the stricken deer with the arrow in her flank, and would be comforted only when he brought the war to a proper close.

It was at this time that Winona wrote in her journal: "General Sherman said that war is the bad place. He knew."

It was also at this time that a certain phrase from a high source briefly engaged the notice of Sharon Whipple.

"Guinea pigs," said he, "are also too proud to fight, but they ain't ever won the public respect on that account. They get treated accordingly."

It was after this that Sharon was heard ominously to wish that he were thirty or forty years younger. And it was after this that Winona became active as a promoter of bazaars for ravaged Belgium and a pacifist whose watchword was "Resist not evil!" She wrote again in her journal: "If only someone would reason calmly with them!" She presently became radiant with hope, for a whole boatload of earnest souls went over to reason calmly with the combatants.

But the light she had seen proved deceiving. The earnest souls went forward, but for some cause, never fully revealed to Winona, they had been unable to reason calmly with those whose mad behaviour they had meant to correct. It was said that they had been unable to reason calmly even among themselves. It was merely a mark of Winona's earnestness that she felt things might have gone differently had the personnel of this valiant embassy been enlarged to include herself. Meantime, war was becoming more and more the bad place, just as General Sherman had said. She had little thought now for silk stockings or other abominations of the frivolous, for her own country seemed on the very verge of committing a frightful error.