Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/130

 MARK TWAIN

he was walking and talking with, and I recognized his voice and stopped him.

That I should step out there and stumble upon

Mr. O was nothing, but that I should know

beforehand that I was going to do it was a good deal. It is a very curious thing when you come to look at it. I stood far within the cigar shop when I delivered my prophecy; I walked about five steps to the door, opened it, closed it after me, walked down a flight of three steps to the sidewalk, then turned to the left and walked four or five more, and found my man. I repeat that in itself the thing was nothing; but to know it would happen so beforehand, wasn t that really curious?

I have criticized absent people so often, and then discovered, to my humiliation, that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it. How like an idiot one feels after a blunder like that !

We are always mentioning people, and in that very instant they appear before us. We laugh, and say, Speak of the devil, * and so forth, and there we drop it, considering it an &quot;accident.&quot; It is a cheap and convenient way of disposing of a grave and very puzzling mystery. The fact is, it does seem to happen too often to be an accident.

Now I come to the oddest thing that ever hap pened to me. Two or three years ago I 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 exploded with such comprehensive effectiveness as to sweep the

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