 mental telegraphy by Mark Twain, a manuscript with a history. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Josh Middledorf. Note to the editor, by glancing over the enclosed bundle of rusty old manuscript, you will perceive that I once made a great discovery. The discovery that certain sorts of things which, from the beginning of the world, had always been regarded as merely curious coincidences, that is to say accidents, were no more accidental than is the sending and receiving of a telegram an accident. I made this discovery sixteen or seventeen years ago and gave it a name, mental telegraphy. It is the same thing around the edges of which the cyclical society of England began to grope and play with four or five years ago, in which they named telegraphy. Within the last two or three years they have penetrated toward the heart of the matter, however, and have found out that the mind can act upon mind in quite detailed and elaborate way over vast stretches of land and water, and they have succeeded in doing by their great credit and influence what I could never have done. They have convinced the world that mental telegraphy is not just a jest, but a fact, and that it is a thing not rare, but exceedingly common. They have done our age a service, and a very great service, I think. In this old manuscript you will find mention of an extraordinary experience of mine in the mental telegraphic line of date about the years 1874 or 1875, the one concerning the great Bonanza book. It was this experience that called my attention to the matter under consideration. I began to keep a record after that of such experience of mind as seemed explicable by the theory that minds telegraph thoughts to each other. In 1878 I went to Germany and began to write the book called A Tramp Abroad. The bulk of this old batch of manuscript was written at that time and for that book, but I removed it when I came to revise the volume for the press, for I feared that the public would treat the thing as a joke and throw it aside, whereas I was in earnest. At home, eight or ten years ago, I tried to creep in under a shelter of an authority grave enough to protect the article from ridicule, the North American review, but Mr Metcalf was too wary for me. He said that to treat these mere coincidences seriously was a thing which the review couldn't dare to do, that I must put either my name or my non-deplume to the article and thus save the review from harm. But I couldn't consent to that. It would be the surest possible way to defeat my desire that the public should receive the thing seriously and be willing to stop and give it some fair degree of attention, so I pigeonholed the MS because I could not get it published anonymously. Now, see how the world has moved since then. These small experiences of mind which were too formidable at that time for admission to a grave magazine, if the magazine must allow them to appear as something above and beyond accidents and coincidences, are trifling and commonplace now since the flood of light recently cast upon mental telegraphy by the intelligent labors of the Psychical Society. But I think they are worth publishing just to show what harmless things and ordinary matters were considered dangerous and incredible eight or ten years ago. As I have said, the bulk of this old manuscript was written in 1878. A later part was written from time to time, two, three, and four years afterward, the post-script I added today. May 1878. Another of those apparently trifling things has happened to me which puzzle and perplex all men every now and then keep them thinking an hour or two and leave their minds barren of explanation or a solution at last. Here it is, and it looks inconsequential enough, I am obliged to say. A few days ago I said, it must be that Frank Millet doesn't know we are in Germany, or he would have written long before this. I have put on the pointer of dropping him at line at least a dozen times during the past six weeks, but I always decided to wait a day or two longer and see if we shouldn't hear from him. But now I will wait, and so I did. I directed the letter to Paris and thought, now we shall hear from him before this letter is fifty miles from Heidelberg. It always happens so. True enough, but why should it? That is the puzzling part of it. We are always talking about letters crossing each other, for that is one of the very commonest accidents of life, we call it accident. But perhaps we misname it. We have the instinct a dozen times a year that the letter we are writing is going to cross the other person's letter, and if the reader will rack his memory a little he will recall the fact that this presentiment had strength enough to it to make him cut his letter down to a decided briefness, because it would be a waste of time to write a letter which was going to cross and hence be a useless letter. I think that in my experience this instinct has generally come to me in cases where I had put off my letter a good while in the hope that the other person would write. Yes. As I was saying I had waited five or six weeks, then I wrote but three lines because I felt and seemed to know that a letter from Millet would cross mine, and so it did. He wrote the same day that I wrote, the letters crossed each other. His letter went to Berlin, care of the American minister who sent it to me. In this letter Millet said he had been trying for six weeks to stumble upon somebody who knew my German address, and at last the idea had occurred to him that a letter sent to me, care of the embassy at Berlin, might possibly find me. Maybe it was an accident that he finally determined to write to me at the same moment that I finally determined to write to him, but I think not. With me the most irritating thing has been to wait a tedious time in a purely business matter, hoping that the other party will do the writing and then sit down and do it myself, perfectly satisfied that the other man is sitting down at the same moment to write a letter which will cross mine. And yet one must go on writing just the same because if you get up from your table and post bone, that other man will do the same thing, exactly as if you two were harnessed together like the Siamese twins, and must duplicate each other's movements. Several months before I left home a New York firm did some work about the house for me, and did not make a success of it, as it seemed to me. When the bill came I wrote and said, I wanted the work perfected before I paid. They replied that they were very busy, but that as soon as they could spare the proper man the thing which would be done. I waited, more than two months enduring as patiently as possible the companionship of bells which would fire away of their own accord, sometimes when nobody was touching them. And at other times wouldn't ring though you struck the button with a sledgehammer. Many a time I got ready to write and then post boned it, but at last I sat down one evening and poured out my grief to the extent of a page or so, and then cut my letter suddenly short because a strong instinct told me that the firm had begun to move in the matter. When I came down to breakfast next morning the postman had not yet taken my letter away but the electrical man had been there, done his work, and was gone again. He had received his orders the previous evening from his employers and had come up by the night train. If that was an accident it took about three months to get it up in good shape. One evening last summer I arrived in Washington registered at the Arlington Hotel and went up to my room. I read and smoked until ten o'clock and then, finding I was not yet sleepy, I thought I would take a breath of fresh air. So I went forth in the rain and tramped through one street after another in an aimless and enjoyable way. I knew that Mr. O., or a friend of mine, was in town and I wished I might run across him. But I did not propose to hunt for him at midnight especially as I did not know where he was stopping. Toward twelve o'clock the streets had become so deserted that I felt lonesome. So I stepped into a cigar shop, far up the avenue, and remained there fifteen minutes, listening to some bummers discussing national politics. Suddenly the spirit of prophecy came upon me and I said to myself, Now I will go out at the door, turn to the left, walk ten steps and meet Mr. O., face to face. And I did too. I could not see his face because he had an umbrella before it, and it was pretty dark anyhow, but he interrupted the man he was walking and talking with, and I recognized his voice and stopped him. That I should step out there and stumble upon Mr. O. was nothing, but that I should know beforehand that I was going to do it was a good deal. It was a very curious thing when you come to look at it. I stood far within the cigar shop when I delivered my prophecy. I walked about five steps to the door, opened it, closed it after me, walked down a flight of three steps to the sidewalk, then turned to the left and walked four or five more and found my man. I repeat that in itself the thing was nothing, but to know it would happen so beforehand. Wasn't that really curious? I've criticized absent people so often and then discovered to my humiliation that I was talking with their relatives, that I have grown superstitious about that sort of thing and dropped it. How like an idiot one feels after a blunder like that. We're always mentioning people and in that very instant they appear before us. We laugh and say, Speak of the Devil, and so forth. And there we drop it, considering it an accident. It is a cheap and convenient way of disposing of a grave and very puzzling mystery. The fact is, it does seem to happen too often to be an accident. Now I come to the oddest thing that ever happened to me. Two or three years ago I was lying in bed, idly musing one morning. It was the second of March when suddenly a red hot new idea came whistling down into my camp and exploded with such comprehensive effectiveness as to sweep the vicinity clean of rubbishy reflections and fill the air with their dust and flying fragments. This idea stated in simple phrase was that the time was ripe and the market ready for a certain book, a book which ought to be written at once, a book which must command attention and be of particular interest to wit a book about the Nevada silver mines. The Great Bonanza was a new wonder then and everybody was talking about it. It seemed to me that the person best qualified to write this book was Mr. William H. Wright, a journalist of Virginia, Nevada, by whose side I had scribbled many months when I was a reporter, ten or twelve years before. He might be alive still. He might be dead. I could not tell. But I would write to him anyway. I began by merely and modestly suggesting that he make such a book. But my interest grew as I went on and I ventured to map out what I thought ought to be the plan of the work. He, being an old friend, and not given to taking good intentions for ill, I even dealt with details and suggested the order and sequence which they should follow. I was about to put the manuscript in an envelope when the thought occurred to me that if this book should be written at my suggestion and then no publisher happened to want it, I should feel uncomfortable. So I concluded to keep my letter back until I should have secured a publisher. I pigeonholed my document and dropped a note to my own publisher, asking him to name a day for a business consultation. He was out of town on a faraway journey. My note remained unanswered, and at the end of three or four days the whole matter had passed out of my mind. On the ninth of March the postman brought three or four letters and among them a thick one whose superscription was in hand which seemed dimly familiar to me. I could not place it at first, but presently I succeeded. Then I said to a visiting relative who was president. Now I will do a miracle. I will tell you everything this letter contains, date, signature, and all, without breaking the seal. It is from a Mr. Wright of Virginia, Nevada, and is dated the second of March, seven days ago. Mr. Wright proposes to make a book about the Silver Minds 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 features of the book, The Great Bonanza. 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 day 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 clairvoyant professes to actually see concealed writing and read it word for word. This was not my case. I only seemed to know and to know absolutely the contents of the letter in detail and do order, but I had to word them myself. I translated them, so to speak out of Wright's language into my own. Wright's letter and the one which I had written to him, but never sent, were in substance the same. Necessarily this could not come by accident. Such elaborate accidents cannot happen. Chance might have duplicated one or two of the details, but she would have broken down on the rest. I could not doubt there was no tenable reason for doubting that Mr. Wright's mind and mine had been in close and crystal clear communication with each other across three thousand miles of mountain and desert on the morning of the second of March. I did not consider that both minds originated that succession of ideas, but that one mind originated them and simply telegraphed them to the other. I was curious to know which brain was the telegrapher and which the receiver, so I wrote and asked for particulars. Mr. Wright's reply showed that his mind had done the originating and telegraphing and mine the receiving. Mark that significant thing now. Consider for a moment how many a splendid original idea has been unconsciously stolen from a man three thousand miles away. If one should question that this is so, let him look into the encyclopedia and confirm once more that curious thing in the history of inventions which has puzzled every one so much. That is, the frequency with which the same machine or other contrivance has been invented at the same time by several persons in different quarters of the globe. The world was without an electric telegraph for several thousand years. Then Professor Henry, the American, Wheatstone in England, Morse on the sea, and a German in Munich all invented it at the same time. The discovery of certain ways of applying steam was made in two or three countries in the same year. Is it not possible that inventors are constantly and unwittingly stealing each other's ideas whilst they stand thousands of miles asunder? Last spring W. D. Howells, a literary friend of mine who lived a hundred miles away, paid me a visit and in the course of our talk he said he had made a discovery, conceived an entirely new idea, one which certainly had never been used in literature. He told me what it was. I handed him a manuscript and said he would find substantially the same idea in that, a manuscript which I had written one week before. The idea had been in my mind since the previous November. It had only entered his while I was putting it on paper, a week gone by. He had not yet written his so he left it unwritten, and gracefully made over all his rights and title in the idea to me. The following statement, which I have clipped from a newspaper, is true. I had the fact from Mr. Howells' lips when the episode was new. Quote, A remarkable story of a literary coincidence is told of Mr. Howells' Atlantic monthly serial, Dr. Breen's Practice. A lady of Rochester, New York, contributed to the magazine after Dr. Breen's Practice, was in type, a short story which so much resembled Mr. Howells that he felt that necessary to call upon her and explain the situation of affairs in order that no charge of plagiarism might be preferred against him. He showed her the proofsheets of his story and satisfied her that the similarity between her work and his was one of those strange coincidences which have from time to time occurred in the literary world. I had read portions of Mr. Howells' story both in manuscript and in proof before the lady offered her contributions to the magazine. Here's another case. I clip it from a newspaper. Quote, The republication of Miss Alcott's novel Moods recalls to a writer in the Boston Post a singular coincidence which has brought to light before the book was first published. Miss Anna M. Crane of Baltimore published Emily Chester, a novel which was pronounced a very striking and strong story. A comparison of this book with Moods showed that the two writers, though entire strangers to each other and living hundreds of miles apart, had both chosen the same subject for their novels, had followed almost the same line of treatment, up to a certain point, where the parallel ceased and the Duneau Mall were entirely opposite, and even more curious the leading characters in both books had identically the same names, so that the names in Miss Alcott's novel had to be changed, then the book was published by Loring. Four or five times within my recollection there has been a lively newspaper war in this country over poems whose authorship was claimed by two or three different people at the same time. There was a war of this kind over nothing to wear, beautiful snow, rock me to sleep, mother, and also over one of Mr. Will Carton's early ballads, I think. These were all blameless cases of unintentional and unwitting mental telegraphy, I judge. A word more as to Mr. Wright. He had had his book in his mind some time, consequently he and not I had originated the idea of it. The subject was entirely foreign to my thoughts. I was wholly absorbed in other things, yet this friend, whom I had not seen and had hardly thought of for eleven years, was able to shoot his thoughts at me across three thousand miles of country, and fill my head with him 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 particular, 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 impression that they were my own original thoughts. I've never seen any mesmeric or clairvoyant performances or spiritual manifestations which were 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 distance and without any artificial preparation of sympathetic conditions 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 possible, no doubt, but I am persuaded that the solution of this horny mystery lies not there, but in the fact that some far-off stranger has been telegraphing his thoughts and sensations into your consciousness and that he stopped because some countercurrent or other obstruction intruded and broke the line of communication. Perhaps they seem repetitious to you, because they ARE repetitions, God at second hand, from that other man. Possibly Mr. Brown, the mind-reader, reads other people's minds. Possibly he does not. But I know of a surety that I have read another's mind, and therefore I do not see why Mr. Brown shouldn't do the like also. I wrote all the foregoing about three years ago in Heidelberg and laid the manuscript aside, purposing to add to it instances of mind telegraphing from time to time as they should fall under my experience. Meantime, the crossing of letters has been so frequent as to become monotonous. However, I have managed to get something useful out of this hint. For now, when I get tired of waiting upon a man whom I very much wish to hear from, I sit down and compel him to write, whether he wants to or not. That is to say, I sit down and write to him, and then tear my letter up, satisfied that my act has forced him to write to me at the same moment. I do not need to mail my letter. The writing is the only essential thing. Of course, I have grown superstitious about this letter crossing business. This was natural. We stayed a while in Venice after leaving Heidelberg one day I was going down in Grand Canal in a gondola, when I heard a shout behind me and looked around to see what the matter was. A gondola was rapidly following, and the gondolier was making signs to me to stop. I did so, and the pursuing boat ranged up alongside. There was an American lady in it, a resident of Venice. She was in good deal of distress, she said. There is a New York gentleman and his wife at the Hotel Britannia who arrived a week ago, expecting to find news of their son, who may have heard nothing about during eight months. There was no news. The lady is down sick with despair, the gentleman can't sleep or eat. Their son arrived at San Francisco eight months ago and announced the fact in a letter to his parents the same day. That is the last trace of him. The parents have been to Europe ever since, but their trip has been spoiled for they have occupied their time simply in drifting restlessly from place to place, writing letters everywhere and to everybody begging for news of their son. But the mystery remains as dense as ever. Well now the gentleman wants to stop writing and go to cabling. He wants to cable San Francisco. He has never done it before because he's afraid of he doesn't know what, death of the son, no doubt. But he wants somebody to advise him to cable. Wants me to do it. Now I simply can't for if no news came that Mother Yonder would die. So I've chased you in order to get you to support me in urging him to be patient and to put things off for a week or two longer. It may be the saving of this lady. Come along, let's not lose any time. So I went along. But I had a program of my own. When I was introduced to the gentleman I said, I have some superstitions but they are worthy of respect. If you will cable San Francisco immediately you will hear news of your son inside of 24 hours. I don't know that you will get the news from San Francisco but you will get it from somewhere. The only necessary thing is to cable. That is all. The news will come within 24 hours. Cable P. King, if you prefer. There's no choice in this matter. This delay is all occasioned by your not cabling long ago when you were first moved to do it. Well it seemed absurd that this gentleman should have been cheered up by this nonsense but he was. He brightened up at once, he sent his cable-gram, and next day at noon, when a long letter arrived from his lost son, the man was as grateful to me as if I had really had something to do with the hurrying up of that letter. The son had shipped from San Francisco in a sailing vessel and his letter was written from the first port he had touched at, months afterward. This incident argues nothing and is valueless. I inserted only to show how strong is the superstition which letter-crossing has bred in me. I was so sure that a cable-gram sent to any place, no matter where, would defeat itself by crossing the incoming news that my confidence was able to raise up a hopeless man and make him cheery and hopeful. But here are two or three incidents which come strictly under the head of mind till a graphing. One Monday morning, about a year ago, the mail came in and I picked up one of the letters and said to a friend, without opening this letter I will tell you what it says. It is from Mrs. Blank 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. Well, I was right. My details were exactly correct, yet we had no suspicion that Mrs. Blank was coming to New York or that she had even a remote intention 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 mantelpiece, but I have had to take it out in trying, because 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 for several months, I said to a member of the household, now, with all this long holiday and nothing in the way to interrupt, I can finish that sentence for you, said the member of the household. Well, do it then, I say. George ought to be able by practicing to learn to let those matches alone. It was correctly done. That was what I was going to say. Yet until that moment George and the matches had not been in my mind for three months, and it is plain that the part of the sentence which I uttered offered not the least clue or a suggestion of what I was purposing to follow it with. My mother is descended from the younger of two English brothers named Lampton, who settled in this country a few generations ago. The tradition goes that the elder of the two eventually fell heir to a certain estate in England, now in Erldom, and died right away. This has always been the way with our family. They always died, and they could make anything by not doing it. The two Lamptons left plenty of Lamptons behind them, and when it last about fifty years ago the English baronetcy was exalted to an Erldom. The great tribe of American Lamptons began to be stir themselves, that is, those descended from the elder branch. Ever since that day, one or another of these has been fretting his life uselessly away with schemes to get at his rights. The present's rightful Earl, I mean the American one, used to write to me occasionally, and try to interest me in his projected raids upon the title and estates by offering me a share in the latter portion of the spoil. But I have always managed to resist his temptations. Well, one day, last summer, I was lying under a tree, thinking about nothing in particular, when an absurd idea flashed into my head, and I said to a member of the household, suppose I should live to be ninety-two, and dumb and blind and toothless, and just as I was grasping out what was left to me on my deathbed, wait, I will finish the sentence, said the member of this household. Go on, said I. Somebody should rush in with a doctor and say, all the other heirs are dead, and you are the Earl of Durham. Well, that is truly what I was going to say, yet until that moment the subject had not entered my head, or been referred to in my hearing for months before. A few years ago this thing would have suspended me, but the light could not much surprise me now, though it happened every week, for I think I know now that mind can communicate accurately with mind, without the aid of the slow and clumsy vehicle of speech. This age does seem to have exhausted invention nearly. Still, it has one important contract on its hands. The invention of the frenophone, that is to say, a method whereby the communication of mind with mind may be brought under command and reduced to certainty and system. The telegraph and the telephone are going to become too slow and wordy for our needs. We must have the thought itself shot into our minds from a distance, then if we need to put it into words, we can do that tedious work at our leisure. Doubtless the something which conveys our thoughts through the air from brain to brain is a finer and subtler form of electricity, and all we need to do is to find out how to capture it and how to force it to do its work, as we have done in the case of the electric currents. Before the day of telegraphs, neither one of these marvels would have seemed any easier to achieve than the other. While I'm writing this, doubtless somebody on the other side of the globe is writing it too. The question is, am I inspiring him, or is he inspiring me? I cannot answer that. But that these thoughts have been passing through somebody else's mind all the time I have been setting them down, I have no sort of doubt. I will close this paper with a remark which I found some time ago in Boswell's Johnson. Voltaire's Candide is wonderfully similar in its plan. To Johnson's Rassala, in so much that I have heard Johnson say that if they had not been published so closely one after the other that there was no time for imitation, it would have been in vain to deny that the scheme of that which came latest was taken from the other. The two men were widely separated from each other at a time, and the sea lay between them. In the Atlantic, for June 1882, Mr. John Fisk refers to the oft-quoted Darwin and Wallace, quote, Coincidence. I alluded just now to the unforeseen circumstance which led Mr. Darwin in 1859 to break his long silence and to write and publish the origin of species. This circumstance served no less than the extraordinary success of his book to show how ripe the minds of men had become for entertaining such views as those which Mr. Darwin propounded. In 1858, Mr. Wallace, who was then engaged in studying the natural history of the melee archipelago, sent to Mr. Darwin, as to the man most likely to understand him, a paper in which he sketched the outlines of a theory identical with that upon which Mr. Darwin had so long been at work. The same sequence of observed facts and inferences that had led Mr. Darwin to the discovery of natural selection and his consequences had led Mr. Wallace to the very threshold of the same discovery, but, in Mr. Wallace's mind, the theory had by no means been wrought out to the same degree of completeness to which it had been, in the mind of Mr. Darwin. In the preface to his charming book on natural selection, Mr. Wallace, with rare modesty and candor, acknowledges that whatever value his speculations may have had, they have been utterly surpassed in richness and cogency of proof by those of Mr. Darwin. This is no doubt true, and Mr. Wallace has done such good work in further illustration of the theory that he can well afford to rest content with the second place in the first announcement of it. The coincidence, however, between Mr. Wallace's conclusions and those of Mr. Darwin, is very remarkable, but, after all, coincidences of this sort have not been uncommon in the history of scientific inquiry, nor is it all surprising that they should occur now and then when we remember that a great and pregnant discovery must always be concerned with some question which many of the foremost minds in the world are busy in thinking about. It was so with the discovery of the differential calculus, and, again, with the discovery of the planet Neptune. It was so with the interpretation of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and with the establishment of the undulatory theory of light. It was so, to a considerable extent, with the introduction of the new chemistry, with the discovery of the mechanical equivalent of heat, and the whole doctrine of the correlation of forces. It was so with the invention of the electric telegraph and with the discovery of spectrum analysis, and it is not at all strange that it should have been so with the doctrine of the origin of species through natural selection." He thinks that these coincidences were apt to happen because the matters from which they sprang were matters which many of the foremost minds in the world were busy thinking about, but perhaps one man in each case did the telegraphing to the others. The aberrations which gave the Verrier, the idea that there must be a planet of such and such mass and such and such an orbit hidden from sight out yonder in the remote abysses of space, were not new. They had been noticed by astronomers for generations. Then why should it happen to occur to three people, widely separated, the Verrier, Mrs. Sommerfell, and Adams, to suddenly go to worrying about these aberrations all at the same time, and set themselves to work to find out what caused them, and to measure and weigh an invisible planet and calculate its orbit, and hunt it down and catch it? A strange project which nobody but they had ever thought before. If one astronomer had invented that odd and happy project fifty years before, though you think he would have telegraphed it to several others without knowing it. But now I come to a puzzler. How is it that inanimate objects are able to affect the mind? They seem to do that. However, I wish to throw in a parenthesis first just a reference to a thing everybody is familiar with, the experience of the receiver of a clear and particular answer to your telegram before your telegram has reached the sender of the answer. That is a case where your telegram has gone straight from your brain to the man it was meant for, far outstripping the wire's slow electricity, and it is an exercise of mental telegraphy which is as common as dining. To return to the influence of inanimate things, in the case of non-professional clairvoyance examined by the Psychical Society, the clairvoyant has usually been blindfolded than some object which has been touched or worn by a person placed in his hand. The clairvoyant immediately describes that person and goes on and gives a history of some event with which the text object has been connected. If the inanimate object is able to affect and inform the clairvoyant's mind, maybe it can do the same thing when it is working in the interest of mental telegraphy. Once a lady in the west wrote me that her son was coming to New York to remain three weeks and would pay me a visit if invited, and she gave me his address. I mislaid the letter, and forgot all about the matter till the three weeks were about up, then a sudden and fiery eruption of remorse burst up in my brain that illuminated all the region round about, and I sat down at once and wrote to the lady and asked for that lost address. But upon reflection I judged that the stirring up of my recollection had not been an accident, so I added a post-grip to stay, never mind, I should get a letter from her son before night. And I did get it, for the letter was already in the town, although not delivered yet. It had influenced me, somehow. I have had so many experiences of this sort, a dozen of them at least, that I am nearly persuaded that inanimate objects do not confine their activities to helping the clairvoyant, but do every now and then give the mental telegraphist a lift. The case of mental telegraphy, which I am coming to now, comes under I don't know exactly know what had. I clipped it from one of your local papers six or eight years ago. I know the details to be right and true, for the story was told to me in the same form by one of the two persons concerned, the clergyman of Hartford, at the same time that the curious thing happened. Quote from the newspaper. A remarkable coincidence. Strange coincidences make the most interesting of stories and most curious of studies. Nobody can quite say how they come about, but everybody appreciates the facts when they do come, and it is seldom that any more complete and curious coincidence is recorded of minor importance than the following, which is absolutely true and occurred in this city. At the time of the building of one of the finest residences of Hartford, which is still a very new home, a local firm supplied the wallpaper for certain rooms, contracting both to furnish and to put up the paper. It happened that they did not calculate the size of one room exactly right, and the paper of one design selected for it fell short just half a roll. They asked for delay enough to send on to the manufacturers for what was needed, and were told that there was no special hurry. It happened that the manufacturers had none on hand, and had destroyed the blocks from which it was printed. They wrote that they had a full list of the dealers to whom they had sold that paper, and that they would write to each of those and get from some of them a roll. It might involve a delay of a couple of weeks, but they would surely get it. In the course of time came a letter saying that, to their great surprise, they could not find a single roll. Such a thing was very unusual, but in this case it had so happened. Accordingly the local firm asked for further time, saying they would write to their own customers, who had bought of that pattern and would get the piece from them. But to their surprise this effort also failed. A long time had now elapsed, and there was no use of delaying any longer. They had contracted to paper the room, and their only course was to take off that which was insufficient, and to put on some other of which there was enough to go around. Accordingly at length a man was sent out to remove the paper. He got his apparatus ready, he was about to begin working under the direction of the owner of the building. When the letter was, for the moment, called away. The house was large and very interesting, and so many people had rambled about it that finally admission had been refused by a sign at the door. On this occasion, however, when a gentleman had knocked and asked for leave to look about, the owner, being on the premises, had been sent forward to reply to the request in person. That was the call that, for the moment, delayed the final preparations. The gentleman went to the door and admitted the stranger, saying he would show him about the house, but first must return for a moment to that room to finish his directions there, and he told the curious story about the paper as they went on. They entered the room together, and the first thing the stranger, who lived fifty miles away, said on looking about was, Why, I have the very paper on a room in my house, and I have an extra roll of it laid away which is at your service. In a few days the wall was papered according to the original contract. Had not the owner been at the house, the stranger would not have been admitted. Had he called the day later, it would have been too late. Had not the facts been almost accidentally told to him, he would probably have said nothing of the paper, and so on. The exact fitting of all the circumstances, something very remarkable, and makes one of those stories that seem hardly accidental in their nature. Something that happened the other day brought my hoary manuscript to mind, and that is how I came to dig it out from its dusty pigeon-hole grave for this publication. The thing that happened was a question, a lady asked it. Have you ever had a vision when awake? I was about to answer promptly, when the last two words of the question began to grow and spread and swell, and presently they attained to vast dimensions. She did not know that they were important, and I did not at first, but I soon saw that they were putting me on the track of the solution of a mystery which had perplexed me a good deal. You will see what I mean when I get down to it. Ever since the English Society for Psychical Research began its searching investigations of ghost stories, haunted houses, and apparitions of the living and the dead, I have read their pamphlets with avidity as fast as they arrived. Now, one of their commonest inquiries of a dreamer or a vision seer is, Are you sure you were awake at the time? If the man can't say he is sure he was awake, a doubt falls upon his tail right there, but if he is positive he was awake and offers some reasonable evidence to substantiate it, the fact counts largely for the credibility of his story. It does with the Society, and it did with me. Until that lady asked me the above question the other day, the question set me to considering, and brought me to the conclusion that you can be asleep, at least wholly unconscious, for a time, and not suspect that it has happened, and not have any way to prove that it has happened. A memorable case was in my mind. About a year ago I was standing on the porch one day when I saw a man coming up the walk. He was a stranger, and I hoped he would ring and carry his business into the house without stopping to argue with me. He would have to pass the front door to get to me, and I hoped he wouldn't take the trouble. To help, I tried to look like a stranger myself. It often works. I was looking straight at the man. He had got to within ten feet of the door, and within twenty-five feet of me, and suddenly he disappeared. It was an astonishing as if a church should vanish from before your face and leave nothing behind it but a vacant lot. I was unspeakably delighted. I had seen an apparition at last with my own eyes in broad daylight. I made up my mind to write about it to the Psychical Society. I ran to where the specter had been to make sure he was playing fair. Then I ran to the other end of the porch, scanning the open ground as I went. No, everything was perfect. He couldn't have escaped without me seeing him. He was an apparition without the slightest doubt. And I would write him up before he was cold. I ran, hot with excitement, and let myself in with a latch-key. When I stepped into the hall, my lungs collapsed. My heart stood still. For there sat that same apparition in a chair, all alone, and as quiet and reposeful as if he had come to stay a year. The shock kept me dumb for a moment or two. Then I said, Did you come in that door? Yes. Did you open it or did you ring? I rang. And the colored man opened it. I said to myself, This is astonishing. It takes George all of two minutes to answer the doorbell when he's in a hurry, and I have never seen him in a hurry. How did this man stand two minutes at that door, within five steps of me, and I did not see him? I should have gone to my grave puzzling over that riddle, but for that lady's chance question last week, have you ever had a vision when awake? It stands explained now, during at least sixty seconds that day I was asleep, or at least totally unconscious, without suspecting it. In that interval the man came to my immediate vicinity, rang, stood there, and waited, then entered and closed the door, and I did not see him, and did not hear the door slam. If he had slipped around the house, in that interval, and gone into the cellar, he had enough time. I should have written him up for the society, and magnified him, and gloated over him, and hurried about him, and thirty Yoke of Oxen could not have pulled the belief out of me that I was one of the favoured ones of the earth, and had seen a vision while wide awake. Now, how are you to tell me when you were awake? What are you to go by? People bite their fingers to find out why you can do that in a dream. End of article Mental Telegraphy by Mark Twain, recording by Josh Middledorf. Mr. Namikawa Yazuyuki, from Japan in the Taisho era, in commemoration of the enthronement. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org, recording by Avae in June 2019. Mr. Namikawa Yazuyuki, maker of cloisoniware. There are two master makers of cloisoniware in Japan who are justly called the leaders of the art. One is Mr. Yazuyuki Namikawa, living at Horii-ikemachi Sanjodori Higashi-iru Kitagura Kyoto, and the other Mr. Sosuke Namikawa in Tokyo. The former has for many years been Teshitsugige Jin, or Artist to the Imperial Household, as his elaboration of the art of making cloisoniware striped with gold and silver is so highly appreciated, both by the court and the nation. Mr. Yazuyuki Namikawa has never been apprenticed in this line of art, and all he has done has been invented by himself. He is an original inventor and an artist in the truest sense of the word. The great master was a samurai in the service of an imperial prince, and immediately before and after the restoration he and his master underwent many hard trials. When stricken with extreme poverty, chance brought him a friend who had some knowledge of cloisoniware. With very scanty means these friends commenced in their shed to manufacture crude articles. It was in 1870, when Mr. Namikawa showed his articles to a certain firm in Kobe, that a novelty struck the proprietor of the firm, and between them a contract was arranged that all articles produced by Mr. Namikawa would be bought by the firm. A few years later Mr. Namikawa was deserted by his friend while lying ill. He was thus compelled to commence again with the support of a lacquerware wholesale dealer in Kyoto. Everything had to be newly devised and prepared by himself, from the simplest process of fastening wires to copper plates to the mixture of colors. Mr. Namikawa often spent months in producing a single color effect. His diligence was, however, soon rewarded, for his exhibits at the industrial exhibition in Kyoto, in 1875, were appreciated, and he was awarded a copper medal. His name as a cloisoniware maker was soon widely known, and he was given many commissions. But more trials and difficulties were in store for him, for in 1881 he was compelled to rearrange his affairs for the second time, as his articles were rejected by a Yokohama firm with whom he had a contract for five years, they being unsailable, while he realized there were many defects and shortcomings in his goods. He discharged all his hands, and with a few apprentices again began his experiments. The new experiments and trials met with success, and he could resume his business with confidence. His hard struggles and diligence of many years are now amply rewarded, and he enjoys the high honor of being ranked among the finest artists in Japan, being decorated with the blue ribbon medal. Mr. Namikawa has his workshop in the compounds of his residence. There he works all the year round. A kiln is also constructed in the compounds of his residence, when no one but himself is allowed to enter, and everything from a small pot to the largest flower base is finished by himself. End of Mr. Namikawa Yasuyuki from Japan in the Taisho era in commemoration of the enthronement. Original rough draft of the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for a people to advance from that subordination in which they have hitherto remained and to assume among the powers of the earth the equal and independent station to which the laws of nature and of nature's god entitle them. A decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the change. We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal and independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable, among which are the preservation of life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these ends governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government shall become destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form as to them shall seem most likely to affect their safety and happiness. Prudence indeed will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes and accordingly all experience has shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable than to write themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations begun at a distinguished period and pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to subject them to arbitrary power, it is their right, it is their duty to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security. Such has been the patient's sufferance of these colonies and such is now the necessity which constrains them to expunge their former systems of government. The history of his present majesty is a history of unremitting injuries and usurpations among which no one fact stands single or solitary to contradict the uniform tenor of the rest, all of which have in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world for the truth of which we pledge a faith yet unsullied by falsehood. He has refused his assent to laws the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained and when so suspended he has neglected utterly to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people unless those people would relinquish the right of representation, a right inestimable to them, formidable to tyrants alone. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly and continually for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long space of time to cause others to be elected whereby the legislative powers incapable of annihilation have returned to the people at large for their exercise, the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has suffered the administration of justice totally to cease in some of these colonies, refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made our judges dependent on his will alone for the tenure of their offices and the amount of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices by a self-assumed power and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has kept among us in times of peace standing armies and ships of war. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitutions and unacknowledged by our laws, giving his assent to their pretended acts of legislation for quartering large bodies of armed troops among us, for protecting them by a mock trial from punishment for any murders they should commit on the inhabitants of these states, for cutting off our trade with all parts of the world, for imposing taxes on us without our consent, for depriving us of the benefits of trial by jury, for transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses, for taking away our charters and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments, for suspending our own legislatures and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here withdrawing his governors and declaring us out of his allegiance and protection. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and tyranny already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions of existence. He has incited reasonable insurrections in our fellow subjects with the allurements of forfeiture and confiscation of our property. He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the Approbrium of Infidel Powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this excruable commerce, and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguish die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them and murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them, thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms. Our repeated petitions have been answered by repeated injury. A prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant is unfit to be the ruler of a people who mean to be free. Future ages will scarce believe that the hardiness of one man adventured within the short compass of twelve years only on so many acts of tyranny without a mask, over a people fostered and fixed in principles of liberty. Nor have we been wanting inattentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend a jurisdiction over these our states. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our immigration and settlement here, no one of which could warrant so strange a pretension that these were affected at the expense of our own blood and treasure unassisted by the wealth or the strength of Great Britain. That in constituting indeed our several forms of government we had adopted one common king thereby laying a foundation for perpetual league and amity with them. But that submission to their parliament was no part of our constitution nor ever in idea if history may be credited. And we appealed to their native justice and magnanimity as well as to the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations which were likely to interrupt our correspondence and connection. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity and when occasions have been given them by the regular course of their laws of removing from their councils the disturbers of our harmony they have by their free election reestablished them in power. At this very time too they are permitting their chief magistrate to send over not only soldiers of our common blood but scotch and foreign mercenaries to invade and deluge us in blood. These facts have given the last stab to agonizing affection and manly spirit bids us to renounce forever these unfeeling brethren. We must endeavor to forget our former love for them and to hold them as we hold the rest of mankind enemies in war in peace friends. We might have been a free and great people together but a communication of grandeur and of freedom it seems is below their dignity be it so since they will have it the road to glory and happiness is open to us too. We will climb it in a separate state and acquiesce in the necessity which pronounces our everlasting adieu. We therefore the representatives of the United States of America in general congress assembled due in the name and by authority of the good people of these states reject and renounce all allegiance and subjection to the kings of great britain and all others who may hear after claim by through or under them. We utterly dissolve and break off all political connection which may have here to force subsisted between us and the people or parliament of great britain and finally we do assert and declare these a colonies to be free and independent states and that as free and independent states they shall hereafter have power to levy war conclude peace contract alliances establish commerce and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do and for the support of this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor and of original draft of the declaration of independence by thomas jefferson the pause part three from preparation for a christian life by soren kirkegaard published in 1850 translated by lee m hollander in 1923 this is a LibriVox recording a LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the pause part three he who invites is then jesus christ in his abasement it is he who spoke these words of invitation it is not from his glory that they are spoken if that were the case then christianity were heathen them and the name of christ taken in vain and for this reason it cannot be so but if it were the case that he who is enthroned in glory had said these words come hither as though it were so altogether easy a matter to be clasped in the arms of glory well what wonder then if crowds of men ran to him but they who thus throng to him merely go on a wild goose chase imagining they know who christ is but that no one knows and in order to believe in him one has to begin with his abasement he who invites and speaks these words that is he's whose words they are whereas the same words if spoken by someone else are as we have seen and historic falsification he is the same lowly jesus christ the humble man born of a despised maiden whose father is a carpenter related to other simple folk of the very lowest class the lowly man who at the same time which to be sure is like oil poured on the fire affirms himself to be god it is the lowly jesus christ who spoke these words and no word of christ not a single one have you permission to appropriate to yourself you have not the least share in him are not in any way of his company if you have not become his contemporary in lowliness in such fashion that you have become aware precisely like his contemporaries of his warning blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me matthew 11 verse 6 you have no right to accept christ's words and then lie him away you have no right to accept christ's words and then in a fantastic manner and with the aid of history utterly changed the nature of christ for the chatter of history about him is literally not worth a fig it is jesus christ in his lowliness who is the speaker it is historically true that he said these words but so soon as one makes a change in his historic status it is false to say that these words were spoken by him this poor and lowly man then with 12 poor fellows as his disciples all from the lowest class of society for some time an object of curiosity but later on in company only with sinners publicans lepers and mad men for one wrist honor life and property or at any rate and that we know for sure exclusion from the synagogue by even letting oneself be helped by him come hither now all ye that labor and are heavy laden oh my friend even if you were deaf and blind and lame and leprous if you which has never been seen or heard before united all human miseries in your misery and if he wished to help you by a miracle it is possible that as is human you would fear more than all your sufferings the punishment which was set on accepting aid from him the punishment of being cast out from the society of other men of being ridiculed and mocked day after day and perhaps of losing your life it is human and it is characteristic of being human were you to think as follows no thank you in that case I prefer to remain deaf and blind and lame and leprous rather than accept aid under such conditions come hither come hither all ye that labor and are heavy laden ah come hither though he invites you and opens his arms ah when a gentlemanly man clad in a silken gown says this in a pleasant harmonious voice so that the words pleasantly resound in the handsome vaulted church a man in silk who radiates honor and respect on all who listen to him ah when a king in purple and velvet says this with the christmas tree in the background on which are hanging all the splendid gifts he intends to distribute why then of course there is some meaning in these words but whatever meaning you may attach to them so much as sure that it is not christianity but the exact opposite something as diametrically opposed to christianity as may well be for remember who it is that invites and now judge for yourself for that you have a right to do whereas men really do not have a right to do what is so often done namely to deceive themselves that a man of such appearance a man whose company everyone shuns who has the least bit of sense in his head or the least bit to lose in the world that he well this is the absurdist and the maddest thing of all one hardly knows whether to laugh or to weep about it that he indeed that is the very last word one would expect to issue from his mouth for if he had said come hither and help me or leave me alone or spare me or proudly I despise you all we could understand that perfectly but that such a man says come hither to me why I declare that looks inviting indeed and still further all ye that labor and are heavy laden as though such folk were not burdened enough with troubles as though they now to cap all should be exposed to the consequences of associating with him and then finally I shall give you rest what's that he helped them I am sure even the most good nature Joker who was contemporary with him would have to say it surely that was the thing he should have undertaken last of all to wish to help others being in that condition himself why it is about the same as if a beggar were to inform the police that he had been robbed for it is a contradiction that one who has nothing and has had nothing informs us that he has been robbed and likewise to wish to help others when oneself needs help most indeed it is humanly speaking the most harebrained contradiction that he who literally hath not where to lay his head that he about whom it was spoken truly in a human sense behold the man that he should say come hither unto me or ye that suffer I shall help now examine yourself for that you have a right to do you have a right to examine yourself but you really do not have a right to let yourself without self examination be deluded by the others into the belief or to delude yourself into the belief that you are a Christian therefore examine yourself supposing you were contemporary with him true enough he alas he affirmed himself to be God but many other mad men had made that claim and his times gave it as their opinion that he uttered blasphemy why was not that precisely the reason why a punishment was threatened for allowing oneself to be aided by him it was the godly care for their souls entertained by the existing order and by public opinion lest anyone should be led astray it was this godly care that led them to persecute him in this fashion therefore before anyone resolves to be helped by him let him consider that he must not only expect the antagonism of men but consider it well even if you could bear the consequences of that step but consider well that the punishment needed out by men is supposed to be God's punishment of him the blasphemer of him who invites come hither now or ye that labor and are heavy laden how now surely this is nothing to run after some little pause is given which is most fittingly used to go around about by way of another street and even if you should not thus sneak out in some way always providing you feel yourself to be contemporary with him or sneak into being some kind of Christian by belonging to Christendom yet there will be a tremendous pause given the pause which is the very condition that faith may arise you are given pause by the possibility of being offended in him but in order to make it entirely clear and bring it home to our minds that the pause is given by him who invites that it is he who gives us pause and renders it by no means and easy but a peculiarly difficult matter to follow his invitation because one has no right to accept it without accepting also him who invites in order to make this entirely clear I shall briefly review his life under two aspects which to be sure show some difference though both essentially pertain to his abasement for it is always an abasement for God to become man even if he were to be an emperor of emperors and therefore he is not essentially more abased because he is a poor lowly man mocked and as scripture adds spat upon Luke 18 verse 32 end of the pause part three from preparation for a Christian life by Soren Kierkegaard published in 1850 translated by Lee M. Hollander in 1923 his last letter home by Quentin Roosevelt this is a LibriVox recording while LibriVox recordings are in the public domain July 11th 1918 there's lots doing in this sector we lost another fellow from our squadron three days ago however you get lots of excitement to make up for it and nearly every patrol we run into some of them we've moved again this time only 10 kilometers it's a much smaller field than the other but it's nearer the front by those 10 kilometers and the other was really too big for us also i like my quarters much better i'm building it in a little french town near the field i room with Ed Thomas our transportation officer in a delightful room it's in one of those white plaster houses with tile roofs that sag in between the rafters an impossible weather cock on the chimney that doesn't work as there's a sparrows nest in between its legs the room is on the ground floor with a window on each side one where you can watch everything that's going on in the street and the other looking out on a garden that's all unblown it's spotlessly clean with red tile floor and a huge grandfather's clock ticking solemnly in the corner the old lady who owns the house is equally delightful she's a little bit of a dried up person at least as old as the hills with gold room spectacles the red cheeks that all these country folk have in a beard that even blank might be proud of at first she regarded me with deep suspicion but i've now seceded in winning her over she thought a little when she found i talked french but the thing that won her over completely was her dog when i first came in i was greeted with furious barkings and growlings by a strong mental effort i seceded in showing no outward and visible signs of my inward and spiritual doubt i walked on past him that night as i was sitting reading the old lady appeared in with her the dog who solemnly advanced wagged his tail and then put his head on my knee to be padded after that the old lady and i became fast friends and now i'm ensuer quintin in a privileged person among other things she told me that she had had German officers quartered in her house in 1870 and then again in 1914 think of it i got my first real excitement on the front for i think i got a bush the operations officer is trying for confirmation on it now i was out on high patrol with the rest of my squadron when we got broken up due to a mistake in formation i dropped into a turn of the drill these planes have so little surface that at five thousand you can't do much with them when i got straightened out i couldn't spot my crowd anywhere so as i had been only up an hour i decided to fool around a little before going home as i was just over the lines i turned and circled for five minutes or so and then suddenly the way planes do come into focus in the air i saw three planes in formation at first i thought they were bush but as they paid no attention to me i finally decided to chase them thinking they were part of my crowd so i started after them full speed i thought at the time it was a little strange with the wind blowing the way it was that they should be going almost straight into germany but i had plenty of gas so i kept on they had been going absolutely straight and i was nearly in formation when the leader did a turn and i saw to my horror that they had white tails with black crosses on them still i was so nearby them that i thought i might pull up a little and take a crack at them i had altitude on them and what was more they hadn't seen me so i pulled up put my sights on the end man and let go i saw my tracers going all around him but for some reason he never even turned until all of a sudden his tail came up and he went down in a drill i wanted to follow him but the other two had started around after me so i had to cut and run however i could half watch him looking back and he was still spinning when he hit the clouds 3 000 meters below of course he may have just been scared but i think he must have been hit or he would have come out before he struck the clouds 3 000 meters is an awfully long spin i had a long chase of it for they followed me all the way back to our side of the lines but our speed was about equal so i got away the trouble is that it was about 20 kilometers inside their lines and i'm afraid too far to get confirmation at the moment every one is very much pleased in our squadron for we are getting new planes we've been using new ports which have the disadvantage of not being particularly reliable and being inclined to catch fire the victory recounted in this letter was afterward verified by the french and duly credited but the verification was not recorded until after quentin had fallen end of his last letter home the letter written by quentin roosevelt just three days before he was shot down over france excerpt from the encyclopedia of greek mythology by sudo apollodorus first or second century ad this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org from book one sky was the first who ruled over the whole world and having wedded earth he began first the hundred-handed as they are named bryarius gaus cotas who were unsurpassed in size and might each of them having a hundred hands and fifty heads after these earth bore him the cyclops twit argus staropes brantes of whom each had one eye on his forehead but them skybound and cast into tartarus a gloomy place in hades as far distant from earth as earth is distant from the sky and again he began children by earth to wit the titans as they are named ocean croiss hyperion creus iapetus and youngest of all cronus also daughters the titanides as they are called tethys rhea thymus nemison phibi dion thaya but earth grieved at the destruction of her children who had been cast into tartarus persuaded the titans to attack their father and gave cronus an adamantine sickle and they all but ocean attacked him and cronus cut off his father's genitals and threw them into the sea and from drops of the flowing blood were born furies twit electo tisaphone and magera and having dethroned their father they brought up their brethren who had been hurled down to tartarus and committed the sovereignty to cronus but he again bound and shut them up in tartarus and wedded his sister rhea and since both earth and sky foretold them that he would be dethroned by his own son he used to swallow his offspring at birth his firstborn hestia he swallowed then demeter and Hera and after them Pluto and Poseidon and raged at this rhea repaired to Crete when she was big with Zeus and brought him forth in a cave of dikti she gave him to curates and to the nymphs Hadristia and Aida daughters of militias to nurse so these nymphs fed the child on the milk of Amalfia and the curates in arms guarded the babe in the cave clashing their spears on their shields in order that cronus might not hear the child's voice but rhea wrapped a stone in swaddling clothes and gave it to cronus to swallow as if it were the newborn child but when Zeus was full grown he took Metis daughter of ocean to help him and he gave cronus a drug to swallow which forced him to discord first the stone and then the children whom he had swallowed and with their aid Zeus waged the war against cronus and the titans they fought for 10 years and earth prophesied victory to Zeus if he should have as allies those who had been hurled down to Tartarus so he slew their glorious compi and loosed their bonds and the Cyclops then gave Zeus thunder and lightning and a thunderbolt and on Pluto they bestowed a helmet and on Poseidon a trident armed with these weapons the gods overcame the titans shut them up in Tartarus and appointed the hundred handers their guards but they themselves cast lots for the sovereignty and to Zeus was allotted the dominion of the sky to Poseidon the dominion of the sea and to Pluto the dominion of Hades now to the titans were born offspring to ocean and tithus were born oceanids to wit aesia sticks electra doris urinome amphotriti and mitis to croas and Phoebe were born asteria and latona typerion and thea were born dawn sun and moon to creus and uribia daughter of sea lotanus were born astrias palace and persis typetus and aesia were born atlas who had the sky on his shoulders and Prometheus and epometheus and menotius he whom Zeus in the battle with the titan smoke with a thunderbolt and hurled down to Tartarus and to cronus and phylira was born cheeron a centaur of double form and to dawn and astrias were born winds and stars to persis and asteria was born hectate and to polis and sticks were born victory dominion emulation and violence but Zeus caused us to be sworn by the water of sticks which flows from the rock of Hades bestowing dishonor on her because she and her children had fought on his side against the titans end of the encyclopedia of greek mythology by sudo apollodorus first or second century ad war scenes across the canadian border 1915 by steve and leacock this is a libervox recording all libervox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libervox.org first published in vanity fair october 1915 in canada we are at war 80 000 canadian soldiers have crossed the ocean for the front some 65 000 more are enlisted for overseas service and are training in military camps in canada at valcartier beside kebec at niagra and elsewhere there are wide tented cities of canadian soldiers the streets of our great towns are filled with men and khaki across the leading thoroughfares are broad white streamers that mark recruiting places for the 50th the 60th the 100th and soon no doubt the 150th battalion of the expeditionary force of the dominion about 15 to 20 battalions an army division of 40 000 men are already on the fighting line the others follow in a steady stream that moves more strongly with every month and shows no ending the regiments are filled as fast as their formation is announced the mingled elements of which our commonwealth is made up are reflected in them there are french regiments from old canada speaking their own tongue highland regiments like that of montreal all honor to it that fought at langa mark troops of horse from the west and irish rangers so-called after the irish fashion because they have never ranged and never been in ireland in single troop ships and in little fleets they move across the ocean one great flotilla that sailed a year ago carrying the men of the first valcarte camp was the largest military force that has ever in all the world's history crossed the atlantic ocean the forces that sailed with cortez or pizarro or that came under bergoin or admiral howe do not compare with it all this is being done among us with but little parade or outward show there is no need now for the 10 glory of the militia camp the people of canada have reached the stage when their eyes can look through the mere pomp and circumstance of war and see the hard reality behind it they have counted their dead they are counting them every day with each fresh list of casualties that the telegraph brings from autowah in the first year of the war canada lost dead wounded and missing 10,870 men from halifax to vancouver there is no village but has its name inscribed upon the role of glory you may see the record of it running in every country newspaper in canada killed in action in france such and such a one of pleasant veil ontario with the battalion and the regimental number there is in it all the humble pathos of personal obscurity lifted a moment to the light without the war this man might have been moving among the yellow sheaves of wheat to the clicking of the reaper in an august harvest field in some lost corner of ontario there is much in it that will bear thinking of yet with the growing losses and increasing sternness of the conflict the recruiting and the mustering under arms move only the faster there is no turning back there is no thought of peace as someone said the other day there are no jane adams's thank god among our women the spirit of canada is rising to meet the danger as the seabird rises before the blackening storm canadian infantry and training the straw hats are merely for domestic use being supplanted in actual service by regulation military caps those of us in canada who can look back in retrospect for 25 or 30 years over the shifting surface of our politics can see in what is happening the realization of our final destiny in the past we scarcely knew what we were or what we meant to be a nation that seemed too large a colony too small in our debating societies young men argued the question shall canada be independent with such feeble warmth as they might an imaginary tyranny was denounced with mimic rage a benevolent chairman perhaps declared with a smile that the affirmative had won and canada was declared independent with polite applause after which the whole audience rose and sang god save the queen so lustily that independence was blasted out of existence but beyond the walls of the debating independence never went independence what british people ever really wanted it the full measure of independence needed by free men was acquired for the whole lot of us your people of the united states and our people of the british dominions somewhere about the time of the magna carta our ancestors obtained it by means of utri bows and quarterstaffs and a few lusty cracks over the head given to upstart princes who misunderstood sacks and freedom your so-called war of independence was not really independence at all it was a row a first-class family row it sticks in my mind as a professor that benjamin franklin said that before 1776 he had heard no one speak of independence either drunk or sober but the quarrel chiefly through the stupidity of a german king was mismanaged and the two communities separated each being just as independent as before no more and no less since then they have run alongside by side each vastly superior and each imitating the other you copied our house of commons we stole your senate you invented a president but in less than no time we turned out the same article imitated to a nicety as a prime minister our separation is not so very great after all and someday i truly believe it our diplomats will come together round a big table fill themselves up with grape juice and in the mad exhilaration of it sign a compact that shall reunite america and england small wonder then that with such a native kinship we in canada often talked of annexation or joining in with the united states every time in the last hundred years of history that we felt surly against england we spoke of annexation there was a time it was in 1849 when all the notables of montreal signed a document asking for it we might have had it too long ago but for the attitude of the people of england glorious they said a grand idea cobden grew rhetorical about a great republic from the polar seas to mexico gladstone said farewell to us in greek and israeli called us millstones and began to untie us from his neck this was more than we could stand we stayed where we were but in any case annexation proved impossible on larger grounds as a mere matter of kinship and high diplomacy it might have been arranged but it ran against such higher realities as your tariff and ours the price of hay in cahoga county your bacon and our butter we didn't object to your institutions we were afraid of your cattle on the oof these things are the bedrock of politics so we have stayed on in the british empire wondering what we were to be till now suddenly with the first shock of war we know that is the supreme meaning of the war to us the rush to arms in canada is the glad cry of a people that have found themselves we are free men we in canada and our kinsfolk in australia and south africa there is no compulsion on us england has never asked and never will a single soldier or a single sovereign from the dominion overseas and england now may draw from them if need be their men in thousands their money in millions till all are gone this is the spirit of the british empire we know now the full meaning of our motto imperium at libertas let those who have ruled and misruled germany these 50 years under the name of empire reflect upon it buckle yourself tight old german officer driving your sylesian peasants to the canon mouth clap down your pointed helmet on your skull and scowl your fiercest as you multiply your wanton deeds against the helpless empire you have made as you wanted it of blood and iron but freedom that should give it power and meaning never this is the war of the free peoples against the people still in chains england and france and italy are free and answer to the people's will russia in the very travail of the war is born into democracy in germany and austria and under the banner of the turk the old tyranny that mankind has fought since the first dawn of freedom stands for its last fight who that believes in humanity or god can doubt the end end of war scenes across the canadian border by steve and leacock recording by david wales when the dead return in japan by mary crawford frazier from her book letters from japan this is a libre vox recording all libre vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libre vox.org i asked today why the sea was so full of stars last night i'd never noticed it at other times but only in these three days and then i was told the story of the festival of the dead which i had heard spoken of in tokyo in a scornful superficial way but which i hear is kept religiously in the provinces still the dear dead little children and old people and all the souls that pass out of earth's family day by day disrobed of their fair garment of the flesh they love not the short winter days of the long dark winter nights but when summer broods over the land when the night is welcomed because it brings a breath of coolness to those whose work is not yet over then they who have laid by the wholesome tass of earth come back in shadowy myriads to visit their old homes to hover around those who still love and remember them to smile if ghosts can smile at the food and money clothing and sandals and little ships for traveling all made ready by the loving souls to whom only such earthly needs are comprehensible but who in preparing their humble gifts are investing them with the only presence the spirits may take home with them again the gift of love which never forgets or disbelieves or despairs just for these three days of july the 13th 14th and 15th heartbroken mothers feel the little lost son or daughter close at hand brought back perhaps by jesus sama the god who watches over the spirits of little children the lights are lit before the small ihal the death tablet set up in the place of honor and inscribed with a name that the little one would not have turned from his play for here that never passed his mother's lips till he was carried away from her his dead name the one by which his shadowy companions call him in the underworld full of comfort must these three days be for the faithful souls who are always yearning to offer some service or some token of love to the dead now they come back and though no one sees them they take their old places in their old homes they find the house decked and garnished for their coming the lotus flower never used say for their honor is gathered and set by their shrine and many another lovely plant and sprig always symbolical meanings are brought in rice and vegetables fruits and cakes are placed for them no animal food is offered as pure spirits would consider that a sinful nourishment but tea is poured out with punctilious ceremony in tiny cups at stated hours in some towns there is a market or fair held expressly that people may buy all they need for the entertainment of the ghosts as these always come from the sea torches are stuck in the sands to show them where to land and when the three days are ended and the travelers must go back reluctantly to their homes then tiny ships are launched straw ships of lovely and elaborate designs credit with dainty foods and light it by small lanterns incense too is burning before they set forth and then they go by river or stream if the sea is distant with their little cargo of love gifts visible and their spirit travelers invisible back to their joy or their sorrow in the underworld end of when the dead return in japan by mary crawford frasier