158 Inquiries into Human Faculty
what touching by reason of its seriousness. I have one case in which a doubt remains whether the children were not changed in their bath, and the presumed A is not really B, and vice versa. In another case, an artist was engaged on the portraits of twins who were between three and four years of age; he had to lay aside his work for three weeks, and, on resuming it, could not tell to which child’ the respective likenesses he had in hand belonged. The mistakes become less numerous on the part of the mother during the boyhood and girlhood of the twins, but are almost as frequent as before on the part of strangers. I have many instances of tutors being unable to distinguish their twin pupils. Two girls used regularly to impose on their music teacher when’ one of them wanted a whole holiday; they had their lessons at separate hours, and the one girl sacrificed herself to receive two lessons on the same day, while the other one enjoyed herself from morning to evening. Here is a brief’ and comprehensive account
“Exactly alike in all, their schoolmasters never could tell them apart; at dancing parties they constantly changed partners without discovery; their close resemblance is scarcely diminished by age.”
The following is a typical schoolboy anecdote
“Two twins were fond of playing tricks, and complaints were frequently made; but the boys would never own which was the guilty one, and the complainants were never certain which of the two he was. One head master used to say he would never flog the innocent for the guilty, and another used to flog both.”
No less than nine anecdotes have reached me of a twin seeing his or her reflection in a looking-glass, and addressing it in the belief it was the other twin in person.
I have many anecdotes of mistakes when the twins were nearly grown up. Thus
“Amusing scenes occurred at college when one twin came to visit the other; the porter on one occasion refusing to let the visitor out of the college gates, for, though they stood side by side, he professed ignorance as to which he ought to allow to depart.”
Children are usually quick in distinguishing between their
