孪生兄弟 One of Twins
安布罗斯·比尔斯/Ambrose Bierce
安布罗斯·比尔斯（Ambrose Bierce，1842～1914），美国恐怖、灵异小说家，出生在美国俄亥俄州梅格斯县一个贫苦的农民家庭。他参加了美国南北战争，这段不平凡的经历为他以后的文学创作打下了坚实的基础。战争结束后，他开始了一个编辑兼作家的忙碌生涯。他早期的作品主要是随笔和讽刺短诗，也包括一些小说。他比较悲观，被人们称为“辛辣比尔斯”。主要的代表作品有《魔鬼辞典》《士兵和百姓的故事》等。
You ask me if in my experience as one of a pair of twins I ever observed anything unaccountable by the natural laws with which we have acquaintance. As to that you shall judge;perhaps we have not all acquaintance with the same natural laws. You may know some that I do not, and what is to me unaccountable may be very clear to you.
You knew my brother John-that is, you knew him when you knew that I was not present;but neither you nor, I believe, any human being could distinguish between him and me if we chose to seem alike. Our parents could not;ours is the only instance of which I have any knowledge of so close resemblance as that. I speak of my brother John, but I am not at all sure that his name was not Henry and mine John. We were regularly christened, but afterward, in the very act of tattooing us with small distinguishing marks, the operator lost his reckoning;and although I bear upon my forearm a small‘H’and he bore a‘J’，it is by no means certain that the letters ought not to have been transposed. During our boyhood our parents tried to distinguish us more obviously by our clothing and other simple devices, but we would so frequently exchange suits and otherwise circumvent the enemy that they abandoned all such ineffectual attempts, and during all the years that we lived together at home everybody recognized the difficulty of the situation and made the best of it by calling us both“Jehnry.”I have often wondered at my father’s forbearance in not branding us conspicuously upon our unworthy brows, but as we were tolerably good boys and used our power of embarrassment and annoyance with commendable moderation, we escaped the iron. My father was, in fact, a singularly good-natured man, and I think quietly enjoyed Nature’s practical joke.