"I tried to write a romance once, and the little wife laughed at it. I
still think it is good stuff and I want it written. The plot is
simple. You'd best skeletonize the plot. Solly Jenks, Hiram
Wall--young men. Time, before the Civil War."
Then the outline of a typical Mark Twain story came in short, explosive
sentences. It was entitled, "Up the Furrow to Fortune." A brief
account of its coming seems vital to the more sustained work which was
destined to follow it. I was not present at the next regular meeting
of the society; but at its close I was summoned to the telephone and
informed that Mark Twain had come again and had said that "the Hannibal
girl" was the one for whom he and Mrs. Hays had been waiting. When
they asked him what he meant, the planchette made reply:
"Consult your record for 1911."
One of the early volumes of the society's record was brought forth, and
a curious fact that all the members of the society had forgotten was
unearthed. About a year after his passing out, Mr. Clemens had told
Mrs. Hays that he had carried with him much valuable literary material
which he yearned to send back, and that he would transmit stories
through her, if she could find just the right person to sit with her at
the transmission board. Although she experimented with each member of
the club, and with several of her friends who were sympathetic though
not avowed investigators, he was not satisfied with any of them. Then
she gave up the attempt and dismissed it from her mind. A
twenty-minute test with me seemed to convince him that in me he had
found the negative side of the mysterious human mechanism for which he
had been waiting.
The work of transmitting that first story was attended with the
greatest difficulty. No less than three distinct styles of diction,
accompanied by correspondingly distinct motion in the planchette under
our fingers, were thrust into the record. At first we were at a loss
to understand these intrusions. That they were intrusions there could
be no doubt. In each case there was a sharp deviation from the plot of
the story, as it had been given to us in the synopsis. After one of
these experiences, which resulted in the introduction of a paragraph
that was rather clever but not at all pertinent. Mark regained control
with the impatiently traced words:
"Every scribe here wants a pencil on earth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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