Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/126

 MARK TWAIN

I came to revise the volume for the press; for I feared that the public would treat the thing as a joke and throw it aside, whereas I was in earnest.

At home, eight or ten years ago, I tried to creep in under shelter of an authority grave enough to protect the article from ridicule The North American Review. But Mr Metcalf wa? too wary for me. He said that to treat these mere &quot; coinci dences&quot; seriously was a thing which the Review couldn t dare to do; that I must put either my name or my nom de plume to the article, and thus save the Review from harm. But I couldn t consent to that; it would be the surest possible way to defeat my desire that the public should receive the thing seri ously, and be willing to stop and give it some fair degree of attention. So I pigeonholed the MS., because I could not get it piiblished anonymously.

Now see how the world has moved since then. These small experiences of mine, which were too formidable at that time for admission to a grave magazine if the magazine must allow them to appear as something above and beyond &quot;accidents&quot; and &quot;coincidences&quot; are trifling and commonplace now, since the flood of light recently cast upon mental telegraphy by the intelli gent labors of the Psychical Society. But I think they are worth publishing, just to show what harmless and ordinary matters were considered dangerous and incredible eight or ten years ago.

As I have said, the bulk of this old manuscript was written in 1878; a later part was written from time to time two, three, and four years afterward. The &quot;Postscript&quot; I add to-day

MAY, 78. Another of those apparently trifling things has happened to me which puzzle and per plex all men every now and then, keep them think ing an hour or two, and leave their minds barren of explanation or solution at last. Here it is and it looks inconsequential enough, I am obliged to say. A few days ago I said: &quot;It must be that Frank Millet doesn t know we are in Germany, or he would have written long before this. I have been on the point of dropping him a line at least a dozen

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