The Autobiography of Mark Twain - Mark Twain (best english books to read .TXT) 📗

keep us from coming into contact with the contagion. But upon reflection I believed that her judgment was at fault. It seemed to me that I could improve upon it if left to my own devices. I cannot remember now whether I was frightened about the measles or not, but I clearly remember that I grew very tired of the suspense I suffered on account of being continually under the threat of death. I remember that I got so weary of it and so anxious to have the matter settled one way or the other, and promptly, that this anxiety spoiled my days and my nights. I had no pleasure in them. I made up my mind to end this suspense and settle this matter one way or the other and be done with it. Will Bowen was dangerously ill with the measles and I thought I would go down there and catch them. I entered the house by the front way and slipped along through rooms and halls, keeping sharp watch against discovery, and at last I reached Will’s bedroom in the rear of the house on the second floor and got into it uncaptured. But that was as far as my victory reached. His mother caught me there a moment later and snatched me out of the house and gave me a most competent scolding and drove me away. She was so scared that she could hardly get her words out, and her face was white. I saw that I must manage better next time, and I did. I hung about the lane at the rear of the house and watched through cracks in the fence until I was convinced that the conditions were favorable. Then I slipped through the back yard and up the back way and got into the room and into the bed with Will Bowen without being observed. I don’t know how long I was in the bed. I only remember that Will Bowen, as society, had no value for me, for he was too sick to even notice that I was there. When I heard his mother coming I covered up my head, but that device was a failure. It was dead summertime⁠—the cover was nothing more than a limp blanket or sheet, and anybody could see that there were two of us under it. It didn’t remain two very long. Mrs. Bowen snatched me out of that bed and conducted me home herself, with a grip on my collar which she never loosened until she delivered me into my mother’s hands along with her opinion of that kind of a boy.

It was a good case of measles that resulted. It brought me within a shade of death’s door. It brought me to where I no longer felt any interest in anything, but, on the contrary, felt a total absence of interest⁠—which was most placid and tranquil and sweet and delightful and enchanting. I have never enjoyed anything in my life any more than I enjoyed dying that time. I was, in effect, dying. The word had been passed and the family notified to assemble around the bed and see me off. I knew them all. There was no doubtfulness in my vision. They were all crying, but that did not affect me. I took but the vaguest interest in it, and that merely because I was the center of all this emotional attention and was gratified by it and felt complimented. When Doctor Cunningham had made up his mind that nothing more could be done for me he put bags of hot ashes all over me. He put them on my breast, on my wrists, on my ankles; and so, very much to his astonishment⁠—and doubtless to my regret⁠—he dragged me back into this world and set me going again.

Wednesday, March 21, 1906

Mental telegraphy⁠—Letter from Mr. Jock Brown⁠—Search for Dr. John Brown’s letters a failure⁠—Mr. Twichell and his wife, Harmony, have an adventure in Scotland⁠—Mr. Twichell’s picture of a military execution⁠—Letter relating to foundation of the Players’ Club⁠—The mismanagement which caused Mr. Clemens to be expelled from the club⁠—He is now an honorary member.

Certainly 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. A few weeks ago when I was dictating something about Dr. John Brown of Edinburgh and our pleasant relations with him during six weeks there, and his pleasant relations with our little child, Susy, he had not been in my mind for a good while⁠—a year, perhaps⁠—but he has often been in my mind since, and his name has been frequently upon my lips and as frequently falling from the point of my pen. About a fortnight ago I began to plan an article about him and about Marjorie Fleming, whose first biographer he was, and yesterday I began the article. Today comes a letter from his son Jock, from whom I had not previously heard for a good many years. He has been engaged in collecting his father’s letters for publication. This labor would naturally bring me into his mind with some frequency, and I judge that his mind telegraphed his thoughts to me across the Atlantic. I imagine that we get most of our thoughts out of somebody else’s head, by mental telegraphy⁠—and not always out of heads of acquaintances, but, in the majority of cases, out of the heads of strangers; strangers far removed⁠—Chinamen, Hindus, and all manner of remote foreigners whose language we should not be able to understand, but whose thoughts we can read without difficulty.

7 Greenhill Place,
Edinburgh,
8th March, 1906.

Dear Mr. Clemens:

I hope you remember me, Jock, son of Dr. John Brown. At my father’s death I handed to Dr. J. T. Brown all the letters I had to my father, as he intended to write his life, being his cousin and lifelong friend. He did write a memoir, published after his death in 1901, but he made no use