was upon me when, thirty-five years ago, I wrote the letter to Mr. Howells, while ostensibly writing it to my wife. Its date—1935—projects me into a still distant day, and makes some of the persons mentioned in it pretty old: for instance, The Earl of Hartford (myself,) 100; his grace the Duke of Cambridge, (Howells) 98; The Lord Archbishop of Dublin (Rev. Joseph H. Twichell) 96; John Howells (the Lord High Admiral) 65; Lady Hartford, (Mrs. Clemens—on whom be peace!) 90; and the Rt. Hon. The Marquis of Ponkapog (Thomas Bailey Aldrich—on whom be peace!) 98.

That first paragraph is bad prophecy—very bad indeed. But it is full of interest, for it calls sharp attention to an astonishing political change—astonishing when we reflect that it has taken only the brief space of thirty-five years to bring it about. Thirty-five or forty years ago the Irishman had been with us only about thirty years, yet had already become a formidable power, and was increasing his power by such leaps and bounds that a person prophetically inclined might with some sort of show of reason predict political supremacy for him after a further interval of a couple of generations, allowing him to remove the Papacy to New York and distribute Irish names about the country—Dublin, Limerick, etc.

It has not happened. No, the probabilities of thirty-five years ago have failed—and signally. In that day the Irishman was at the top of our foreign element, and the German came next. The other foreigners were few and unimportant. There were lots and lots of Americans in the city of New York then—a thing unthinkable to-day! To-day we have to go around with an interpreter. To-day eighty-five per cent of Greater New York’s four-and-odd millions are foreign, half-foreign, and foreign by one remove. The citizen with American great-grandparents—when found—is stuffed and put in the great museum in the park, along with the Brontosaur and the other impressive fossils. The Irishman still rules the city—like hell, so to speak!—but it is by grace of native genius, not by authority of numbers.

2. My second paragraph foresees a day when the telegraph is to be too slow, and we shall correspond by thought-transference—straight from brain to brain. That forecast has still 27 years in which to make good. I repeat that forecast, and stand by it. Before 1935 it will cease to be a dream and become a fact. Wireless telegraphy has arrived; from sending thought on the wings of the air out of a battery made of metal to sending it out of a battery made of brain-cells is but a trifling step, and the Marconi is already born who will show us how to do it. The temper exhibited in paragraph No. 2 is another bad prophecy. I shall let fly no such outbursts when I am a hundred years old. I shall be a very quiet prophet then, and an example to the whole cemetery.

3. Paragraph No. 3 is good enough prophecy. If I live to be a hundred I know very well I shall verify it; for by that time I shall be sure to think I did walk from Hartford to Boston with Twichell, and that we did walk back in a single day—a hundred miles and more! Even now, when I tell about that walk I find it difficult to keep its marvels within bounds. That was a memorable excursion. It was a wretched idea. Twichell proposed it, and I thoughtlessly said yes to it, which shows that there was more than one ass in Hartford in those days. We walked twenty miles the first day, and I went to bed that night a physical wreck, though Twichell was as fresh as a new-blown flower, for he had been chaplain of a marching regiment all through the war and by practice had acquired the endurance of a steel machine. The next morning we resumed the pedestrian exploit—on the train, not on foot. The Associated press had informed the country about our start. Aldrich and Howells and Osgood and the others were full of enthusiastic interest in the matter and were on the look-out. When next day’s telegrams informed the world that we should reach Boston by nightfall, those boys were proud of us and astonished, for they had not supposed we could walk the whole distance in two days, but would require three. So they got up a banquet for us at Young’s Hotel, and when we entered the place on foot (from the station) they were insane with admiration of us and pride in us. I suppose we would have told them about the train if we had thought of it.

4. Paragraph No. 4 is good prophecy. Day before yesterday the air-ship of the brothers Wright broke the world’s record. It did another thing too: it demonstrated—for the first time in history—that a competent air-ship can be devised. For several years now, the newspapers of the whole civilised world have daily been filled with the encouraging doings of the air-ship inventors, and now at last we perceive that the long hoped-for day has come, and that we shall presently be flying about the skies with ease and confidence and comfort. No. 4 has another prophecy: that by 1935 we shall have Chinamen coming to us as missionaries. But I think that that was not really intended as a prediction, I think it merely embodied a hope; a hope that some day those excellent people would come here and teach us how to be at peace and bloodless for thousands of years without the brutal help of armies and navies. But that gentle dream is dead: we have taught them to adopt our sham civilisation and add armies and navies to such other rotten assets as they may possess.

Paragraph No. 8 refers to poor Ralph Keeler—on whom be peace! He was a dear good young fellow, and we all loved him. He sailed for Cuba as correspondent for the New York Tribune, and never reached there. There was some evidence that he talked too freely in the hearing of some royalist Spaniards and was assassinated and his body flung into the sea. His novel “Gloverson and His Silent Partners” is probably long ago forgotten, for Keeler’s removal left only one person to remember it. I judge so, for he told me himself that only one copy was sold. (CU-MARK)