Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/132

 MARK TWAIN

of three or four days the whole matter had passed out of my mind. On the pth 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. I could not &quot;place&quot; it at first, but presently I succeeded. Then I said to a visiting relative who was present:

&quot;Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you every thing this letter contains date, signature, and ail- without breaking the seal. It is from a Mr. Wright, of Virginia, Nevada, and is dated the 2d of March- seven days ago. Mr. Wright proposes to make a book about the silver-mines and the Great Bonanza, 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 a history of the chief feature of the book, one Great Bonanza.&quot;

I 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, written on the same date, contained, and mine still lay in its pigeonhole, where it had been lying during the seven days since it was written.

There was no clairvoyance about this, if I rightly comprehend what clairvoyance is. I think the clair voyant professes to actually see concealed writing, and read it off word for word. This was not my case. I only seemed to know, and to know abso lutely, 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.

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