Page:In defense of Harriet Shelley, and other essays.djvu/155

 MENTAL TELEGRAPHY AGAIN

Toward the end of last January that idea, after an interval of years, came suddenly into my head again forcefully, too, and without any apparent reason. Whence came it? What suggested it? I will touch upon that presently.

I was at that time where I am now in Paris. I wrote at once to Henry M. Stanley (London), and asked him some questions about his Australian lecture tour, and inquired who had conducted him and what were the terms. After a day or two his answer came. It began:

The lecture agent for Australia and New Zealand is par excellence Mr. R. S. Smythe, of Melbourne.

He added his itinerary, terms, sea expenses, and some other matters, and advised me to write Mr. Smythe, which I did February 3d. I began my letter by saying in substance that, while he did not know me personally, we had a mutual friend in Stanley, and that would answer for an introduc tion. Then I proposed my trip, and asked if he would give me the same terms which he had given Stanley.

I mailed my letter to Mr. Smythe February 6th, and three days later I got a letter from the selfsame Smythe, dated Melbourne, December lyth. I would as soon have expected to get a letter from the late George Washington. The letter began somewhat as mine to him had begun with a self-introduction:

DEAR MR. CLEMENS. It is so long since Archibald Forbes and I spent that pleasant afternoon in your comfortable house at Hartford that you have probably quite forgotten the occasion.

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