Orient, but always gave up the idea, partly because of the great length
of the journey and partly because my wife could not well manage to go
with me. Towards the end of last January that idea, after an interval of
years, came suddenly into my head again–forcefully, too, and without any
apparent reason. Whence came it? What suggested it? I will touch upon
that presently.
I was at that time where I am now–in Paris. I wrote at once to Henry M.
Stanley (London), and asked him some questions about his Australian
lecture tour, and inquired who had conducted him and what were the terms.
After a day or two his answer came. It began:
“The lecture agent for Australia and New Zealand is par
excellence Mr. R. S. Smythe, of Melbourne.”
He added his itinerary, terms, sea expenses, and some other matters, and
advised me to write Mr. Smythe, which I did–February 3d. I began my
letter by saying in substance that while he did not know me personally we
had a mutual friend in Stanley, and that would answer for an
introduction. Then I proposed my trip, and asked if he would give me the
same terms which he had given Stanley.
I mailed my letter to Mr. Smythe February 6th, and three days later I got
a letter from the selfsame Smythe, dated Melbourne, December 17th. I
would as soon have expected to get a letter from the late George
Washington. The letter began somewhat as mine to him had begun–with a
self-introduction:
DEAR MR. CLEMENS,–It is so long since Archibald Forbes and I
spent that pleasant afternoon in your comfortable house at
Hartford that you have probably quite forgotten the occasion.”
In the course of his letter this occurs:
“I am willing to give you” [here be named the terms which he
had given Stanley] “for an antipodean tour to last, say, three
months.”
Here was the single essential detail of my letter answered three days
after I had mailed my inquiry. I might have saved myself the trouble and
the postage–and a few years ago I would have done that very thing, for I
would have argued that my sudden and strong impulse to write and ask some
questions of a stranger on the under side of the globe meant that the
impulse came from that stranger, and that he would answer my questions of
his own motion if I would let him alone.
Mr. Smythe’s letter probably passed under my nose on its way to lose
three weeks traveling to America and back, and gave me a whiff of its
contents as it went along. Letters often act like that. Instead of the
thought coming to you in an instant from Australia, the (apparently)
unsentient letter imparts it to you as it glides invisibly past your
elbow in the mail-bag.
Next incident. In the following month–March–I was in America. I spent
a Sunday at Irvington-on-the-Hudson with Mr. John Brisben Walker, of the
Cosmopolitan magazine. We came into New York next morning, and went to
the Century Club for luncheon. He said some praiseful things about the
character of the club and the orderly serenity and pleasantness of its
quarters, and asked if I had never tried to acquire membership in it.
I said I had not, and that New York clubs were a continuous expense to
the country members without being of frequent use or benefit to them.
“And now I’ve got an idea!” said I. “There’s the Lotos–the first New
York club I was ever a member of–my very earliest love in that line.
I have been a member of it for considerably more than twenty years, yet
have seldom had a chance to look in and see the boys. They turn gray and
grow old while I am not watching. And my dues go on. I am going to
Hartford this afternoon for a day or two, but as soon as I get back I
will go to John Elderkin very privately and say: ‘Remember the veteran
and confer distinction upon him, for the sake of old times. Make me an
honorary member and abolish the tax. If you haven’t any such thing as