Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/140

 MARK TWAIN

strictly under the head of mind- telegraphing. One Monday morning, about a year ago, the mail came in, and I picked up one of the letters and said to a friend: &quot;Without opening this letter I will tell you

what it says. It is from Mrs., and she says she

was in New York last Saturday, and was purposing to run up here in the afternoon train and surprise us, but at the last moment changed her mind and returned westward to her home. *

I was right; my details were exactly correct. Yet

we had had no suspicion that Mrs. was coming

to New York, or that she had even a remote inten tion of visiting us.

I smoke a good deal that is to say, all the time- so, during seven years, I have tried to keep a box of matches handy, behind a picture on the mantel piece; but I have had to take it out in trying, be cause George (colored), who makes the fires and lights the gas, always uses my matches and never replaces them. Commands and persuasions have gone for nothing with him all these seven years. One day last summer, when our family had been away from home several months, I said to a member of the household :

&quot;Now, with all this long holiday, and nothing in the way to interrupt &quot;

&quot;I can finish the sentence for you,&quot; said the mem ber of the household.

&quot;Do it, then,&quot; said I.

&quot;George ought to be able, by practising, to learn to let those matches alone.&quot;

It was correctly done. That was what I was

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