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, the two boys, and Rowena the light-weight 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 broken-hearted; for
she had found that he had spoken only the truth; that it was not he, but
the other half 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, although 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 she
was such an ass and said such stupid irritating things and was so
nauseatingly sentimental. Still it had to be done. So, at the top of
Chapter XVII, I put in a “Calendar” remark concerning July Fourth, and
began the chapter with this statistic:
“Rowena went out in the back yard 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 Cooper and Aunt Betsy Hale where
they were aground, 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
of the others, but I gave up the idea, partly because I believed that if
I kept that up it would arouse 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