The St. Johns herald., 1893-01-12
i MENTAL TELEGRAPHY.
A Strange Experience Related by
 Mark Twain.
He andl Friend Three Thousand Miles Away Are Possessed of Exactly the Same IGea at the
 Same Time.

ever happened to me, says Mark Twain in Harper's Magazine. Two or three years ago was lying in bed, idly mus ing, one morning-it was the 2d of Mnrch-when suddenly a red-hot new idea came whistling down into my camp, and exploded with such comprehensive effectiveness 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; book which ought to be written at once; Q book which must command attention and be of peculiar interest-to-wit: a book about the Nevada silver mines. The
 Great Bonanza" was a new wonder then, and everybody was talking about it. It seemed to me that the person best qualified to write this book was William H. Wright, a journalist of Vir- ginia, New, by whose side l had scribbled many months when l was a reporter there ten or twelve years before. He might be alive still-he might be dead; l could not tell, but would write him, anyway. I began by merely and modestly sug- gcsting that he make such a book, but my interest grew as l went on, and i ventured 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 intentions for i'll. I even dealt with details, and suggested the order and sequence which they should follow. 1 was about to put the manu- script in an envelope, when the thought occurred to me that if his book should be written at my suggestion, and then no publisher happen to want it, should feel uncomfortable; so 1 concluded to keep my letter back until I should have secured publisher. pigeon-holed my document and dropped a note to my own publisher, asking him to name day for business consultation. He was out of town on 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
 
 thick one whose superscription was in hand which seemed dimly familiar to me. could not place it at first, but presently I succeeded. Then I said to a visiting relative who was present:
 E. ..'Now will do a miracle. will tell you everything this letter contains- date, signature, and all-without breaking the seal. It is from a Mir. Wright, of Virginia, New, and is dated the 2d of March-seven days ago. MT. Wright proposes to make book about the silver mines and the Great Donan- "a, and asks what I, 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 his tory of the chief feature of the book, the Great Bonanza"
 : I opened the letter and showed that I had stated the date and the contents correctly. Mir. Wright's letter simply contained what my own letter, written on the same date, contained, and mire still lay in the pigeon-hOle, where it had been lying during the seven days since it was written. There was no clair voyance about this, if I rightly com prehend what clairvoyancc is. l think the clairvoyant professes actually to see concealed writing and read it word for word. This was not my case. only seemed to know, and to know ab- solutely, the contents of the letter in detail and due order, but I had to word them myself. I translated them, so to speak, out of Wright's language into my own. Wrights letter and the one had written to him, but never sent, were in substance the same.
 Necessarily this could not come by accident; such elaborate accidents can not happen. Chance might have dupli- cated one or two of the details, but she would have broken down on the rest. I could not doubt--there was no tenable reason for doubting-that Mir. Wright's mind and mine had been in close and crystal-clear communication with each other across three thousand miles of mountain and,deSert on the morning of the 2d of March. l did not consider that both minds originated that sue cessipn of ideas, but that one man orig mated them, and simply tclegraphed them to the other. 1 was curious to know which brain was the telegrapher and which the receiver, so l wrote and asked for particulars. Mir. Wright's reply showed that his mind had done the originating and telegraph ing and mine the receiving. Mark that significant thing now; consider for n moment how many a splendid orig inar' idea has been unconsciously stolen from a man three thousand miles away. If one should question that this is so let him look into the cyclopedia ! and con once more that curious thing in the history of inventions which has i puzzled every one so much-that is, the | frequency with which the same ma chine or other contrivance has been in- vented at the same time by several per sons in different quarters of the globe.