How to Tell a Story and other Essays, 1899 | Page 7

were perhaps ten ladies present, all seated. In the midst of them
was Mrs. R., as I had expected. She was dressed exactly as she was
when I had seen her in the afternoon. I went forward and shook hands
with her and called her by name, and said:
"I knew you the moment you appeared at the reception this afternoon."
She looked surprised, and said: "But I was not at the reception. I have
just arrived from Quebec, and have not been in town an hour."
It was my turn to be surprised now. I said: "I can't help it. I give you
my word of honor that it is as I say. I saw you at the reception, and you
were dressed precisely as you are now. When they told me a moment

ago that I should find a friend in this room, your image rose before me,
dress and all, just as I had seen you at the reception."
Those are the facts. She was not at the reception at all, or anywhere
near it; but I saw her there nevertheless, and most clearly and
unmistakably. To that I could make oath. How is one to explain this? I
was not thinking of her at the time; had not thought of her for years.
But she had been thinking of me, no doubt; did her thoughts flit
through leagues of air to me, and bring with it that clear and pleasant
vision of herself? I think so. That was and remains my sole experience
in the matter of apparitions--I mean apparitions that come when one is
(ostensibly) awake. I could have been asleep for a moment; the
apparition could have been the creature of a dream. Still, that is nothing
to the point; the feature of interest is the happening of the thing just at
that time, instead of at an earlier or later time, which is argument that
its origin lay in thought-transference.
My next incident will be set aside by most persons as being merely a
"coincidence," I suppose. Years ago I used to think sometimes of
making a lecturing trip through the antipodes and the borders of the
Orient, but always gave up the idea, partly because of the great length
of the journey and partly because my wife could not well manage to go
with me. Towards 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 introduction. 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
17th. 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."
In the course of his letter this occurs:
"I am willing to give you" [here be named the terms which he had
given Stanley] "for an antipodean tour to last, say, three months."
Here was the single essential detail of my letter answered three days
after I had mailed my inquiry. I might have saved myself the trouble
and the postage--and a few years ago I would have done that very thing,
for I would have argued that my sudden and strong impulse to write
and ask some questions of a stranger on the under side of the globe
meant that the impulse came from that stranger, and that he would
answer my questions of his own motion if I would let him alone.
Mr. Smythe's letter probably passed under my nose on its way to lose
three weeks traveling to America and back, and gave me a whiff of its
contents