Oh, look here! You are just like everybody; merely because I am literary you think I’m a commercial somnambulist, and am not watching you with all that money in your hands. Bless you, I’ve got a description of you and a photograph in every police-office in Christendom, with the remark appended: “Look out for a handsome, tall, slender young man with a gray mustache and courtly manners and an address well calculated to deceive, calling himself by the name of Smith.” Don’t you try to get away—it won’t work.
From the note-book:
Midnight. At Miss Bailie’s
home for English governesses. Two
comedies & some songs and
ballads. Was asked to speak & did it.
(And rung in the “Mexican
Plug.”)
A Voice. “The Princess Hohenlohe wishes you to write on her fan.”
“With pleasure—where is she?”
“At your elbow.”
I turned & took the fan & said, “Your Highness’s place is in a fairy tale; & by & by I mean to write that tale,” whereat she laughed a happy girlish laugh, & we moved through the crowd to get to a writing-table—& to get in a strong light so that I could see her better. Beautiful little creature, with the dearest friendly ways & sincerities & simplicities & sweetnesses—the ideal princess of the fairy tales. She is 16 or 17, I judge.
Mental Telegraphy. Mrs.
Clemens was pouring out the coffee this
morning; I unfolded the Neue
Freie Presse, began to read a paragraph
& said:
“They’ve found a new way to tell genuine gems from false——”
“By the Roentgen ray!” she exclaimed.
That is what I was going to
say. She had not seen the paper, &
there had been no talk about
the ray or gems by herself or by me.
It was a plain case of telegraphy.
No man that ever lived has
ever done a thing to please God
—primarily.
It was done to please himself, then God next.
The Being who to me is the real God is the one who created this majestic universe & rules it. He is the only originator, the only originator of thoughts; thoughts suggested from within, not from without; the originator of colors & of all their possible combinations; of forces & the laws that govern them; of forms & shapes of all forms-man has never invented a new one. He is the only originator. He made the materials of all things; He made the laws by which, & by which only, man may combine them into the machines & other things which outside influences suggest to him. He made character—man can portray it but not “create” it, for He is the only creator.
He, is the perfect artisan, the perfect artist.
CCVI
A SUMMER IN SWEDEN