Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1891-12-31
MIND WITH MIND.
Widely Separated. Two Person. s,r,n,,.,.-
ously Have the Same Idea

''NS VIII MIMI.
Widely Separated. Two Person. s,r,,,..n.-
ousiy Have the Same idea.
Now / come to the oldest thing that
ever happened to me. Two or three
years ago was lying in bed, idly mus
ing, one morning-it was the I'd of
March-when suddenly a red-hot new
idea came whistling down into nv
camp and exploded withs such compre-
hensiVe effectiveness as to sweep the
vicinity clean of rubbishy refe ctions,
ana NIL the air with their dust and
nylng fragments This idea, stated in
simple phrase, was that the time was
ripe and the market ready for a GER
tain book; book which ought to be
written at once: a book which must COM
mand attention and be of peculiar in
terest-to wit, book about the Nevada
silver mines. The Great Bonanza
was new wonder then, and every body
was talking about it. 1t seemed to me
that the person best qualified to write
the book was Mr.. William III. Wright, a
journalist of Virginia, New, by whose
side had scribled many months when
L was reporter there ten or twelve
years before. He might be alive still;
he might be dead; 1 could not tell; but
would write him anyway. l began
by merely and modestly suggesting
that he make such a book; but my in
terest grew as / went on, and I ven
tured to map out what / thought ought
to be the plan of the work, he being an
old friend, and not given to taking good
intentions for i'll. / even dealt with
details, and suggested the order and
sequence which they should fol-
low. l was about to put the manu-
script in an envelope, when the thought
occurred to me that if this book should
De written at my suggestion, and then
no publisher happen to want it, l should
feel uncomfortable; so 1 concluded to
keep my letter back until should have
secured publisher. l pigeon-holed my
document, and dropped a note to my
own publisher, asking him to name a
day for business consultation. He was
out of town on a far journey. 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 three or
four letters, and among them a thick
one whose superscription was in a hand
which seemed dimly familiar to me.
could not place" it at first, but pres
emily / succeeded. Then / said to WIS.,
iting relative who was present:
''Now l will do a miracle. / will
tell you everything this letter con-
tains-date, signature and all-without
breaking the seal. 1t is from Mr..
Wright, of Virginia, New, and is
dated the I'd of March-seven days ago.
Mr.. Wright proposes to make a book
about the silver mines and the Great
Bonanza, ana asks what /, friend,
think of the idea. He says his subjects
are to be so and so, their order and Sc
quence so and so. and he will close
with history of the chief feature of
the book, the Great Bonanza"
/ opened the letter. and showed that
i had stated the date and the contents
correctly. Mr.. Wright's letter simply
contained what my own letter. writ
ten on the same date, contained, and
mine still lay in its pigeon-hole, where
it had been lying during the seven
days since it was written.
There was no clairvoyance about this,
if / rightly comprehend what clairvoy-
ance is. / think the clairvoyant pro-
fesses to actually see concealed writ
ing, and read it off word for word.
This was not the case. | only seemed
to known, and to know absolutely, the
contents of the letter in detail and due
order, but had to word them myself.
i translated them, so to speak, out of
Wright's language into my own.
Wright's letter and the one which
had written to him but never sent were
in su distance the same.
Necessarily this could not come by
accident; such elaborate accidents can
not happen. Chance might have dupli-
Gated one or two of the details, but she
would have broken down on the rest.
could not doubt-there was no ten
able reason for doubting-that Mr..
Wright's mind and mine had
been in close and crystal
clear communication with each other
across three thousand miles of noun
tain and desert On the morning of the
ed of March. / did not consider that
both minds originated that succession
of ideas, but that one mind originated
them, and simply telegraphed them to
the other. / was curious to know
which brain was the telegrapher and
which the receiver, SO 1 wrote and
asked for particulars Mr.. Wright's
reply showed that his mind had done
the originating and telegraphing and
mine the receiving. Mark that sig
nificant thing, now: consider for a mo-
ment how many a splendid ''original''
idea has been unccnsciously stolen
from Il man three Thousand miles away!
If should question that
this is so. let him look into the
cyclopedia and con once more
that curious thing in the history of in
ventions which has puzzled everyone
so much-that is, the frequency with
which the same machine or other con-
trivance has been invented at the same
time by several persons in different
quarters of the globe. The world was
without an electric telegraph for sew
eral thousand years; then Prof. Henry.
the American; Wheatstone in England,
Morse on the sea and German in Mu-
mich all invented it at the same time.
The discovery of certain ways of ap-
! PLYING steam waSmade in two or three
countries in the same year. Is it not
possible that inventors are constantly
and unwittingly stealing each others
IDEAS whilst they stand thousands of
miles ;isuuder?-Mark Twain, in Har-
- Ter Magazine.
THREE DOLLARS OR LIFE.
faw Young Man Found Friend When
Very Much in Need.