Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/136

 MARK TWAIN

three thousand miles of country, and fill my head with them, to the exclusion of every other interest, in a single moment. He had begun his letter after finishing his work on the morning paper a little after three o clock, he said. When it was three in the morning in Nevada it was about six in Hartford, where I lay awake thinking about nothing in par ticular; and just about that time his ideas came pouring into my head from across the continent, and I got up and put them on paper, under the im pression that they were my own original thoughts.

I have never seen any mesmeric or clairvoyant performances or spiritual manifestations which were in the least degree convincing a fact which is not of consequence, since my opportunities have been meager; but I am forced to believe that one human mind (still inhabiting the flesh) can communicate with another, over any sort of a distance, and with out any artificial preparation of &quot;sympathetic con ditions&quot; to act as a transmitting agent. I suppose that when the sympathetic conditions happen to exist the two minds communicate with each other, and that otherwise they don t; and I suppose that if the sympathetic conditions could be kept up right along, the two minds would continue to correspond without limit as to time.

Now there is that curious thing which happens to everybody: suddenly a succession of thoughts or sensations flocks in upon you, which startles you with the weird idea that you have ages ago experienced just this succession of thoughts or sensations in a previous existence. The previous existence is pos-

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