I have not sufficiently mastered German, to allow my using it with
impunity. My collection of fourteen-syllable German words is still
incomplete. But I have just added to that collection a jewel–
a veritable jewel. I found it in a telegram from Linz, and it contains
ninety-five letters:
Personaleinkommensteuerschatzungskommissionsmitgliedsreisekostenrechnungs
erganzungsrevisionsfund
If I could get a similar word engraved upon my tombstone I should sleep
beneath it in peace.
UNCONSCIOUS PLAGIARISM
DELIVERED AT THE DINNER GIVEN BY THE PUBLISHERS OF “THE
ATLANTIC MONTHLY” TO OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, IN HONOR OF HIS
SEVENTIETH BIRTHDAY, AUGUST 29, 1879
I would have travelled a much greater distance than I have come to
witness the paying of honors to Doctor Holmes; for my feeling toward him
has always been one of peculiar warmth. When one receives a letter from
a great man for the first time in his life, it is a large event to him,
as all of you know by your own experience. You never can receive letters
enough from famous men afterward to obliterate that one, or dim the
memory of the pleasant surprise it was, and the gratification it gave
you. Lapse of time cannot make it commonplace or cheap.
Well, the first great man who ever wrote me a letter was our guest–
Oliver Wendell Holmes. He was also the first great literary man I ever
stole anything from–and that is how I came to write to him and he to me.
When my first book was new, a friend of mine said to me, “The dedication
is very neat.” Yes, I said, I thought it was. My friend said, “I always
admired it, even before I saw it in The Innocents Abroad.” I naturally
said: “What do you mean? Where did you ever see it before?” “Well, I
saw it first some years ago as Doctor Holmes’s dedication to his Songs in
Many Keys.” Of course, my first impulse was to prepare this man’s
remains for burial, but upon reflection I said I would reprieve him for a
moment or two and give him a chance to prove his assertion if he could:
We stepped into a book-store, and he did prove it. I had really stolen
that dedication, almost word for word. I could not imagine how this
curious thing had happened; for I knew one thing–that a certain amount
of pride always goes along with a teaspoonful of brains, and that this
pride protects a man from deliberately stealing other people’s ideas.
That is what a teaspoonful of brains will do for a man–and admirers had
often told me I had nearly a basketful–though they were rather reserved
as to the size of the basket.
However, I thought the thing out, and solved the mystery. Two years
before, I had been laid up a couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and
had read and re-read Doctor Holmes’s poems till my mental reservoir was
filled up with them to the brim. The dedication lay on the top, and
handy, so, by-and-by, I unconsciously stole it. Perhaps I unconsciously
stole the rest of the volume, too, for many people have told me that my
book was pretty poetical, in one way or another. Well, of course, I
wrote Doctor Holmes and told him I hadn’t meant to steal, and he wrote
back and said in the kindest way that it was all right and no harm done;
and added that he believed we all unconsciously worked over ideas
gathered in reading and hearing, imagining they were original with
ourselves. He stated a truth, and did it in such a pleasant way, and
salved over my sore spot so gently and so healingly, that I was rather
glad I had committed the crime, far the sake of the letter. I afterward
called on him and told him to make perfectly free with any ideas of mine
that struck him as being good protoplasm for poetry. He could see by
that that there wasn’t anything mean about me; so we got along right from
the start. I have not met Doctor Holmes many times since; and lately he
said– However, I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which I got