MENTAL TELEGRAPHY ♦ By Mark Twain ♦ Memoir, Narrative ♦ Full Audiobook

MENTAL TELEGRAPHY ♦ By Mark Twain ♦ Memoir, Narrative ♦ Full Audiobook



Title:  MENTAL TELEGRAPHY



Author:  Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)



Genre:  Memoir, Narrative



Language:  English



Read By:  Josh Mitteldorf



Librivox Recording



Certain mental telegraphy is an industry which is always silently at work -- oftener than otherwise, perhaps, when we are not suspecting that it is affecting our thought... I imagine that we get most of our thoughts out of somebody else's head, by mental telegraphy -- and not always out of the heads of acquaintances, but, in the majority of cases, out of the heads of strangers; strangers far removed...

- Mark Twain's Autobiography



Hartford, Conn., October 4, 1884.



DEAR SIR, -- I should be very glad to be made a Member of the Society for Psychical Research; for Thought-transference, as you call it, or mental telegraphy as I have been in the habit of calling it, has been a very strong interest with me for the past nine or ten years. I have grown so accustomed to considering that all my powerful impulses come to me from somebody else, that I often feel like a mere amanuensis when I sit down to write a letter under the coercion of a strong impulse; I consider that that other person is supplying the thoughts to me, and that I am merely writing from dictation. And I consider that when that other person does not supply me with the thoughts, he has supplied me with the impulse anyway; I never seem to have any impulses of my own. Still, may be I get even by unconsciously furnishing other people with impulses.



I have reaped an advantage from these years of constant observation. For instance when I am suddenly and strongly moved to write a letter or inquiry, I generally don't write it -- because I know that that other person is at that moment writing to tell me the thing I wanted to know, -- I have moved him or he has moved me, I don't know which, -- but anyway I don't need to write, and so I save my labour. Of course I sometimes act upon my impulse without stopping to think. My cigars come to me from 1,200 miles away. A few days ago, -- September 30th, -- it suddenly,, and very warmly occurred to me that an order made three weeks ago for cigars had as yet, for some unaccountable reason, received no attention. I immediately telegraphed to inquire what the matter was. At least I wrote the telegram and was about to send it down town, when the thought occurred to me, "This isn't necessary, they are doing something about the cigars now -- this impulse has travelled to me 1,200 miles in half a second." S. L. CLEMENS.



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