The Wrong Twin
and considered himself forever shut out from those rewards that would fall to the righteous who loved church and could sit still there without jiggling or writhing or twisting or scratching.

He was a little diverted from his tortures by the arrival of the Whipples. From the Penniman pew he could glance across to a side pew and observe a line of repeated Whipple noses, upon which for some moments he was enabled to speculate forgetfully. Once—years ago, it seemed to him—he had heard talk of the Whipple nose. This one had the Whipple nose, or that one did not have the Whipple nose; and it had then been his understanding that the Whipple family possessed but one nose in common; sometimes one Whipple had it; then another Whipple would have it. At the time this had seemed curious, but in no way anomalous. He had readily pictured a Whipple nose being worn now by one and now by another of this family. He had visualized it as something that could be handed about. Later had come the disappointing realization that each Whipple had a complete nose at all times for his very own; that the phrase by which he had been misled denoted merely the possession of a certain build of nose by Whipples.

But even this simple phenomenon offered some distraction from his present miseries. He could glance along the line of Whipple noses and observe that they were, indeed, of a markedly similar pattern. It was, as one might say, a standardized nose, raised by careful selection through past generations of Whipples to the highest point of efficiency; for ages yet to come the demands of environment, howsoever capricious, would probably dictate no change in its structural details. It sufficed. It was, moreover, a nose of good lines, according to conventional canons. It was shapely, and from its high bridge jutted forward with rather a noble sweep of line to the thin, curved nostrils. The high bridge was perhaps the detail that distinguished it from most good noses. It seemed to begin to be a nose almost from the base of the brow. In a world of all Whipple noses this family would have been remarked for its beauty. In one of less than Whipple noses—with other less claimant designs widely popularized—it might be said that the Whipple face would be noted rather for distinction than beauty.

In oblique profile the Wilbur twin could glance across the fronts in turn of Harvey D. Whipple, of Gideon Whipple, his father; of Sharon Whipple, his uncle; and of Juliana Whipple, sole offspring of Sharon. The noses were alike. One had but to look at Miss Juliana to know that in 
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