The Durham daily globe. (Durham, N.C.) 1889-1894, 1891-12-14
MENTAL %TELEGRAPHY.
INFLUENCE OF MIND ON MIND
STRONGLY ILLUSTRATED.

An Odd Experience of Mark Twain's.
Now leone to the oldest thing tina
ever happened to me. Two or thre'
years ago | was lying in bed idly musine
one morning-it was the I'd Of March
when suddenly a red hot new idea cam
whistling down into my camp and ex
ploded with such comprehensive effec
tiveness as to sweep the vicinity clean o.
rubbishy reflections and fill the air with
their dust and flying fragments. This
idea, stated in simple phrase, was that
the time was ripe andMthe market ready
for a certain book; a boOk which ought
to be written at once; a book which must
command attention and be of peculiar
interest-to wit, a book about the Ne
vada silver mines.
The Great Bonanza was a new Won
der then, and everybody was talking
about it. 1t seemed to me that the per-
son best qualified to write this book was
Mr.. William II. Wright, a journalist of
Virginia, New, by whose side l had
scrubbed many months when l was a
reporter there ten or twelve before. He
might be alive still; he might be dead; l
could not tell; but | would write him
anyway.
| began by merely and modestly sug-
costing that he make such a book, but
my interest grew as l went on, and | ven
tured to map out what l thought ought
to be the plan of the work, he being an old
friend, and not given to taking good in
tentiOns for i'll. | even dealt with details
and suggested the order and sequence
which they should follow. l was about
to put the manuscript in an envelope,
when the thought occurred to me that if
this book should be written at my sug-
gestion, and then no publisher happen to
want it, | should feel uncomfortable; so
| concluded to keep my letter back until
| should have secured a publisher.
READING AN UNOPENED LETTER.
| ~pigeOnhOled my document and drop
ped a note 10 my wv publisher, asking
him to name aday for a business c~Onsulta-
ton. He was out Of town on a far Jour
ney. My note remained unanswered, and
at the end OF three or four days the whole
matter had passed out Of my mind. On
the 9Th Of March the pOstman brought
IiASC VI LO't1 1CCtCIS, dIlu dLIlOIlS IIlCIu IL
thick one whose superscription was in a
hand which seemed dimly familiar to
me. | could not place" it at first, but
presently l succeeded. Then | said TO a
visiting relative who was present:
CHOW | will do a miracle. [ will tell
you everything this letter contains
date, signature and all-withOut break
ing the seal. 1t is from a Mr.. Wright, of
Virginia, New, and is dated the 2d of
March-seven days ago. Mr.. Wright
proposes to make a book about the silver
mines and the Great Bonanza, and asks
what |, as a friend, think Of the idea.
He says his subjects are to be so and
50, their order and sequence so and so,
and he will close with a history of the
chief feature of the book, the Great
Bonanza"
FAD Alright.
L opened the letter and showed that |
had stated the date and the contents cor
Mr.. Wright's letter simply con-
tanned what my w letter, written on
the same date contained, and mine still
lay in its pigeonhole, where it had been
lying during the seven days since it wa
written.
There was no clairvoyance about this,
if l rightly comprehend what clairvoy-
ance IS. l think the c~lairvoyant pro-
fesseS to actually see concealed writing
and read it off word for word. This was
not my case. | only seemed to know,
and to know absolutely, the contents of
the letter in detail and due order, but I
had to word them myself. l translated
them, so to speak, out of Wright's Ian
guage into my own.
Wrlghts letter and the one which |
had written to him, but never sent, We're
N substance the same.
Necessarily this could not come by &C
such elaborate accidents cannot
Chance might have duplicated
or two of the details, but she would
broken down on the rest. I could
not dOubt-there was no tenable reason
for dOubting-that Mr.. Wright's mind
mine had been in close and crystal
communication with each other
across 5000 miles of mountain and
iesert on the morning of March 2. | & did
lOt consider that both minds originated
succession of ideas, but that one
mind originated them, and simply tele-
5raphed them to the other.
MENTAL T~ELEGRAPuY.
| was curious to know which brain
vas the telegrapher and which was the
'~eceiver, SO wrote and asked for par
iculars. Mr.. Wright's reply showed
hat his mind had done the originating
md telegraphing and mine the receiving.
that significant thing now;
consider for a moment how many a
''original' idea has been un-
consciously stolen from a man !, 900 miles
away.
If one should question that this is so.
him look into the cyclopedia and
on once more that curious thing in the
history of inventions which has puzzled :
very one so much-thati is, the frequency
With which the same machine or other I
'ontrlvance has been invented at the I
anne time by several persons in differ 7
mt quarters of the globe. The world !
vas without an electric telegraph for !
eVeral thousand years; then Professor
~ w- l.