The door closed, and he was gone. But as Prue put her arm in mine and
we went upstairs together, she whispered in my ear:

"How glad I am that you don't wear spectacles."



MY DOUBLE; AND HOW HE UNDID ME

By Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909)

[From _The Atlantic Monthly_, September, 1859. Republished in the
volume, _The Man Without a Country, and Other Tales_ (1868), by Edward
Everett Hale (Little, Brown & Co.).]

It is not often that I trouble the readers of _The Atlantic Monthly_.
I should not trouble them now, but for the importunities of my wife,
who "feels to insist" that a duty to society is unfulfilled, till I
have told why I had to have a double, and how he undid me. She is
sure, she says, that intelligent persons cannot understand that
pressure upon public servants which alone drives any man into the
employment of a double. And while I fear she thinks, at the bottom of
her heart, that my fortunes will never be re-made, she has a faint
hope, that, as another Rasselas, I may teach a lesson to future
publics, from which they may profit, though we die. Owing to the
behavior of my double, or, if you please, to that public pressure
which compelled me to employ him, I have plenty of leisure to write
this communication.