Arizona republican., 1892-01-15
MENTAL EELEGRAPHY.
INFLUENCE OF MIND ON MIND
 STRONGLY ILLUSTRATED.

A strange story or Thought Transmis-
 sIon-Two We'll Known Men Conceive
 the Same Idea at About the Same Time.
 An Odd Experience of Mark Twain's
 Now come to the oldest thing that ever happened 10 me. Two or three years ago was lying in bed idly musing one morning--it was the 2d of March when suddenly a red hot new idea came whistling down into my camp and ex- ploded with such comprehensive effec- tiveness as to sweep the vicinity clean of rubbishy reflections and fill the air with their dust and flying fragments. This idea, stated in simple phrase, was that the time was ripe and the market ready for certain book; a book which ought to be written at once; book which must command attention and be of peculiar interest-to wit, book about the Ne vada silver mines.
 The Great Bonanza was q new won- der then, and everybody was talking about 1t. It seemed to me that the per son best qualified to write this book was Mir, William II. Wright, journalist of Virginia, New, by whose side 1 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 l would write him anyway.
 began by merely and modestly sug- gesting that he make such book, but my interest grew as 1 went on. and 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 in- tentions for ill. l even dealt with details and suggested the order and sequence which they should follow. 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, l should feel uncomfortable; so l concluded to keep my letter back until should have secured a publisher.
 READING AN UNOPENED LETTER.
 pigeonholed my document and drop ped note to my own publisher, asking him to name day for business consulta- tion. He was out of town on 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 three or four letters, and among them a thick one whose superscriptlOu was in a hand which seemed dimly familiar to me. l could not place" it at first, but presently succeeded. Then said to a visiting relative who was present:
 "NOw 1 will Go miracle. will tell you everything this letter contains date, signature and all-withOut break ing the seal It is from MT. Wright, of Virginia, New, and is dated the 2d of March-seven days ago. Mir Wright proposes to make book about the silver mines and the Great Bonanza, and asks what 1, as a friend, think of the idea. He says his subjects are to be so and so, their order and sequence so and so, and he will close with history of the chief feature of the book, the Great Bonanza"
 READ ARIGHT.
 opened the letter and showed that had stated the date and the contents cor rectly. Mir Wright's letter simply con tained what my own letter, written on the same date contained, and mine still lay in it's pigeonhole, 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 l think the clairvoyant pro- fesses to actually see concealed writing and read it off word for word This was not my case. 1 only seemed to know, and to know absolutely, the contents of the letter in detail and due order, but had to word them myself. translated them, so to speak, out of Wrights Ian guage into my own.
 Wright's letter and the one which had written to him, but never sent, were in substance the same.
 Necessarily this could not come by &C., cident: such elaborate accidents cannot happen. Chance might have duplicated one or two of the details, but she would have broken down on the rest. could not .doubt-there was no tenable reason for doubting-that Mir Wrights mind and mine had been in close and crystal clear communication with each other across 5000 miles of mountain and desert on the morning of March 9. did not consider that both minds originated that succession of ideas, but that one mind originated them, and simply tele- graphed them to the other.
 MENTAL TELEGRAPHY.
 1 was curious to know which brain was the telegrapher and which was the receiver, so wrote and asked for par ticulars Mr. Wright's reply showed that his mind had done the originating and telegraphing and mine the receiving. Mark that significant thing now; Consider for moment how many a splendid "original" idea has been un- consciously stolen from man 8 3,000 miles away,
 If one should question that this is so, let him look into the cyciopedia and con once more that curious thing in the history of inventions which has puzzled every one so much-that is, the frequency with which the same machine or other contrivance has been invented at the same time by several persons in differ ent quarters of the globe. The world was without an electric telegraph for several thousand years; then Professor Henry the American, Wheatstone in England, Morse on the sea, and a Ger man in Munich all invented it at the same time. Mark Twain in Harpor's.