Twin

“ The patterns of a twin's right hand are not the same as those on his left. One twin's patterns are never the same as his fellow twin's patterns—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. ”

“ If you were alone in the sacred room you could go right up to the frame and feel the actual bars and put your hand thrillingly through them to touch the painted king of the jungle. But the Merle twin could sit alone in the presence of this prized art treasure and never think of touching it. He would sit quietly and read his instructive book and not occasion the absent Winona any anxiety. Wherefore the Wilbur twin each Sabbath morning in the woodshed polished three pairs of shoes, and not uncheerfully. ”

“ He was already in his basket.
“As I can’t be baby,” Tootles said, getting heavier and heavier, “do you think I could be a twin?”
“No, indeed,” replied the twins; “it’s awfully difficult to be a twin.” ”

“ we're twins, and so we love each other more than other people,” answered Daisy, with a brightening face, for she considered being a twin one of the highest honors she could ever receive. ”

“ The busy season had begun, when everybody was making ready for Christmas; and the twin cousins had as much as they could do in talking over what they were going to do, as they sat in each other’s lap and looked at their work-baskets. ”

“ On the other hand, the more favoured twin, who was from its birth a remarkably strong lively infant, and met with all justice from its nurse, throve apace, and was pronounced by her to be the very picture of the bonnie leddie, its mamma, and then, with all the low cunning of her kind, she would launch forth into panegyrics of its beauty, and prophecies of the great dignities and honours that would one day be showered upon it ”

“ Twins are thought by the Kpelle to do wonders; they even say that "a twin surpasses every medicine-man." [77] Among the Fan or Fang, a tribe of the Cameroons in West Africa, there is a curious superstition that a twin ought not to see a rainbow. Should he by accident have caught sight of one, he must shave his eyebrows and dye the place of the one black and the place of the other red. ”

“ Among the relatives of imbeciles and idiots, twin-bearing is common. In fact, the whole history of twin-births is of an exceptional character, indicating imperfect development and feeble organization in the product, and leading us to regard twins in the human species as a departure from the physiological rule, and therefore injurious to all concerned. Monsters born without brains have rarely occurred except among twins.
The birth of twins occurs once in about eighty deliveries. A woman is more apt to have no children than to have more than one at a time. ”

“ One twin has sexual intercourse with his mother, and begets himself and his brother; and next he has sexual intercourse with his grandmother and begets his mother. I should think it would be difficult, mamma, though interesting. Oh, ever so difficult. I should think that the Corespondent —
All things are possible with God, my child.
Yes, I suppose so. But not with any other Siamese twin, I suppose. You don't think any ordinary Siamese twin could beget himself and his brother on his mother, do you, mamma, and then go on back while his hand is in and beget her, too, on his grandmother? ”

“ Twins are not like other people, and there is something wakon about them. They come from Twin Land where they have lived together always; and when they come into this world looking for a mother, they ride around on jack rabbits. Nobody can see them; but they ride around anyway, looking and looking for a good and pretty young woman. Maybe she is getting water from a spring or a creek and the twins have followed her on their jack rabbits. They are hiding in the brush, and when the good and pretty young woman leans over, they hurry and get inside of her. ”

“ They with surpassing skill, most wise, have measured out the Twins united in their birth and in their home. They, the refulgent Sages, weave within the sky, yea, in the depths of sea, a web for ever new. ”

“ Since his views were published I have observed various twins, and have seen some instances of astonishing similarity, but in other children of the same parents, not twins, more instances which could readily be accounted for by heredity and the influence of similar surroundings and nurture. A number of instances could be given of distinguished men, now living or but recently deceased, where the physical and mental resemblances between them and their twin brothers are no greater than ordinarily exist between brothers. ”

“ It is not. The environment of Twin A includes the life of Twin B, and vice versa. Therefore each twin must evolve a different identity. As a man grows and enjoys experience, each factor changes his personality in some way major or minor, and he emerges a true identity, which, however, is different in some minor way from day to day as his experiences accumulate."
"Then at the instant of duplication, the two persons have approximately the same identity?" ”

“ While speaking of twins, I may perhaps mention that in Sussex a “left twin,” that is a child who has outlived its fellow twin, is thought to have the power of curing the thrush by blowing three times successively into the patient’s mouth, provided this same patient be of opposite sex to the operator.
There is a strong tendency in the “North Countrie” to connect the past and the present, external nature and the history and destiny of man. ”

“ Are not our thumbs twins? A regular Castor and Pollux? And all of our fingers? Are not our arms, hands, legs, feet, eyes, ears, all twins; born at one birth, and as much alike as they possibly can be? ”

“ In the first case, it is supposed that the twins are necessarily of the same sex, while in the other, each twin child may be of the sex determined by the fertilized ovum from which it sprung. Clearly, in the latter case it might often happen that both twins might be male, or both female.
Dr. Berry Hart quotes from the records of another observer (Wilder) in which there was a pair of “identical” twins, in whom the similarity was complete even to the finger-prints. [Brit. Med. Jour., July 29th, 1911, p. 215.] ”

“ Twins, Triplets, and Quadrigemini of comparatively rare Occurrence—Of the Signs of two or more Children in the Womb—Management of Twin and Triplet Cases—The Nursing of Twins. It sometimes happens that the woman gives birth to two or more children at the same time. When a mother has twins it is usually the case that both children are smaller than the natural size; they are not, however, both of the same weight ”

“ Dee is the most wonderfullest person in the world."
Mrs. Green smiled and hugged the enthusiastic Dum.
"Yes, I know what a sister can be. My sister, Mildred, is not my twin in reality, but the Siamese twins cannot be closer than we are in spirit. I hardly ever see her now, either, as she lives in the northwest and I am at Wellington all winter and in Kentucky in the summer. Fortunately, love can work by wireless at any distance, so absence does not affect our affection for each other." ”

“ These uninformed women claimed that if a prospective mother should find and become interested in a number of twin objects in nature, such as eggs with double yolks, twin apples, peaches, ears of corn, potatoes, tomatoes, etc., that she would most certainly be the mother of twins. ”

“ We won't have to be small-towners unless we want to," he added.
He suspected that the Wilbur twin felt slighted and hurt at being passed over, and would be needing comfort. But it appeared that the severed twin felt nothing of that sort. ”

“ I never could look at these little fellows without an inexplicable feeling coming over me; and though there was nothing so very remarkable or unprecedented about them, except the singular coincidence of two sisters simultaneously making the world such a generous present; yet, the mere fact of there being twins always seemed curious; in fact, to me at least, all twins are prodigies; and still I hardly know why this should be; for all of us in our own persons furnish numerous examples of the same phenomenon. ”

“ THE exceedingly close resemblance attributed to twins has been the subject of many novels and inlays, and most persons have felt a desire to know upon what basis of truth those works of fiction may rest. But twins have many other claims to attention, one of which will be discussed in the present memoir. It is, that their history affords means of distinguishing between the effects of tendencies received at birth and of those that were imposed by the circumstances of their after-lives; in other words, between the effects of nature and of nurture. ”

“ I sought for twins
I could not find;
I search my mind,
No twins have seen.
They seem alike,
Man and man, beast and brute,
Yet no faces two are like;
Ne’er the same song sang the lute.
Ne’er two hearts are same. ”

“ The first twin, seeing his brother's back turned, dug into his pockets and, having brought out with an air of modest pride a fish-line, a morsel of gingerbread, a bit of resin, human tooth, part of a human bone, a kitten's skull, a chewed piece of gum, and an incredibly besmirched Sunday-school card, extracted from these omens a large rusty screw, which he proffered to his grandmother, [Pg 42] muttering, "For your Everything Jar." ”

“ Just a few of our class are to be in it, but I'm one of them and so is my twin. We look so alike that we are to be pages, you know, and,—" a sound on the stairs made her heart stand still but she went bravely on—"I never told you what a lark we had at our masquerade, did I? It was really a perfect circus, everybody mixed us up,"—Miss Pringle attempted to say something, and Phyllis interpreted it her own way. ”

“ When the last of a sign is rising for one of the twins, the other will usually be born under the next sign, As the rising sign is one of the principal significators in moulding the body, the appearance of the second twin might be totally different from the first. ”

“ Strangely enough the birth of twins seems to be regarded with horror or disgust, or at least as a misfortune, in almost all lands where Christ, the Lover of children, is not known. In some parts of Africa the little twin babies are stuffed into a pot and thrown into the woods to die, and their mother is considered disgraced for life or sent into exile. ”

“ And then I seem to see the satisfaction with which she hit upon the solution of inventing pretty twin girls of seventeen, an age which permits remarks with a sting in them to be uttered apparently in innocence and yet is marriageable or, at any rate, engageable; making them orphans ”

“ A mother of twins says: “There seems to be a sort of interchangeable likeness in expression, that often gave to each the affect of being more like his brother than himself.” Again, two twin brothers, writing to me, after analysing their points of resemblance, which are close and numerous, and pointing out certain shades of difference, add: “These seem to have marked us through life, though for a while when we were first separated, the one to go to business, and the other to college, our respective characters were inverted ”

“ The woman gave birth to twins, a boy and a girl, who were nurtured in secret and made to believe that their father was dead no difficult matter, since at a tender age they saw their mother die, and they gave little thought to tracing genealogies. As our maternal grandfather was rich our childhood passed happily. My sister and I were brought up together, loving one another as only twins can love when they have no other affections. ”

“ We thought “twins” must be something pretty nice, and learned to feel the disappointment that we saw on the faces of strangers when Mother set them right. Once at camp-meeting we were playing together, when some ladies stopped us asking, “Little girls, are you twins?” Mother was not near. Kate and I looked at each other and knew that our time had come to be twins. ”

“ As a mother distinguishes between twins by the constant practice of her eyes, so you too will distinguish when you have become accustomed to it. Do you not see that it has become a perfect proverb that one egg is like another? ”

“ What a withering rebuke is this to our boasted civilization, with its quarrelings, its wranglings, and its separations of brothers!
As men, the Twins have not always lived in perfect accord; but still there has always been a bond between them which made them unwilling to go away from each other and dwell apart. ”

“ Now what does this overwhelming body of evidence establish? It establishes just one thing, and that thing it establishes beyond any peradventure whatever. Friends, we would not have it known for the world, and I must beg you to keep it strictly to yourselves, but the truth is, we are no more twins than you are. ”

“ Before these houses two little boys were playing, evidently twins, for they not only looked alike and dressed alike, but every motion one made was also made by the other at the same time and in precisely the same way. ”

“ Amongst many of these pagan tribes a curious superstition exists with regard to the birth of twins in a family. The twins are killed and the mother driven out into the bush, for twins are said to be a curse from the god the people worship ”

“ I know they think it wicked and ridiculous to leave the raising of four bright spirits in the unworthy hands of a girl like me. I know they will all sniff and smile and—Of course, twins, they have a perfect right to feel, and act, so. I am not complaining. But I want to show them for once in their lives that the parsonage runs smoothly and sweetly. If you would just stay at home with us, father, it would be a big help. You are such a tower of strength. ”