So I went along, but I had a programme 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 twenty-four 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 twenty-four hours. Cable Pekin, if you prefer; there is no choice in this matter. This delay is all occasioned by your not cabling long ago, when you were first moved to do it.’ It seems absurd that this gentleman should have been cheered up by this nonsense, but he was; he brightened up at once, and sent his cablegram; 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 touched at, months afterwards. This incident argues nothing, and is valueless. I insert it only to show how strong is the superstition which ‘letter-crossing’ has bred in me. I was so sure that a cablegram 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-telegraphing. 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. ——, 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.’ I was right; my details were exactly correct. Yet we had had no suspicion that Mrs. —— 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 (coloured), 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 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 the sentence for you,’ said the member of the household. ‘Do it, then,’ said I. ‘George ought to be able, by practising, to learn to let those matches alone.’