It is true that the Mind Cure worked wonders. For a million years the mind has been, in a large degree, master of the body, and has been able to heal many of the body’s ailments. When the physician undertakes to cure you he requires you to continue the medicines until the cure has been effected; he would not promise a cure hampered by the understanding that you were to take the medicines when you pleased, and discontinue them at your convenience. In like manner, I suppose that the mind cannot do its healing effectively except it be kept steadily at its work, and its professional requirements be faithfully observed. Take a case of insomnia, for instance. The mind can cure that, and with certainty, under certain conditions—let us say under a single condition: that the patient shall keep watch and not allow his thoughts to interest themselves for a single instant in any distressing or harassing subject. This is all that is necessary to defeat insomnia, and the method is easy and simple—I mean as a rule.Ⓐtextual note There are sorrows and troublesⒶtextual note which the beginner’s mind is not able to contend with successfully whenⒶtextual note those powerful aids—Ⓐtextual notetraining and experience—Ⓐtextual note areⒶtextual note lacking; but to the trainedⒶtextual note mind, the long-experienced mind, the case is differentⒶtextual note; it seldom encounters a trouble which it [begin page 343] cannot drive out of its client’s thoughts and furnish him healing sleep and peace in its place.Ⓐtextual note I am not speaking from hearsay, but from personal experience; and not from a brief experience, but from the continuous practice and experience of many years.

To divert the mind from a physical pain, or from a mental one, by the introduction of a new interest, must Ⓐtextual note bring relief, because the mind cannot give full and effective attention to two subjects at the same time. The mind cannot get full satisfaction out of the most entertaining pain if you break in upon its vicious pleasures with a sudden and startling interruption. When you burn yourself, the mind centresⒶtextual note all its attention upon the pain, to the exclusion of all other interests, and by this cunning method intensifies it and exaggerates it; but if the stove-pipe comes clattering down with a crashⒶtextual note, the mind is diverted to that cataclysm for the moment, and the pain ceases. If the event were not a falling stove-pipe, but a rocking, and cracking, and crumbling sky-scraperⒶtextual note in a San Francisco earthquake, and the sufferer were on the twentieth floor and it took him half an hour to pick his way down to the ground, through a rain ofⒶtextual note dropping plaster and brickbats, he would never feel aⒶtextual note twinge of pain from his burn during the whole transit.

The mind cannot heal broken bones; and doubtless there are many other physical ills which it cannot heal, but it can greatly help to modify the severities of all of them, without exception, and there are mental and nervous ailments which it can wholly heal, without the help of physician or surgeon. Apparently there are many breeds of mental healing, to judge by the names applied to it—such as the Faith Cure, the Prayer Cure, Mental Healing, Christian Science, and so on—but I suspect, and indeed I also believe, that these are all one and the same thing, and do not need any but one name—Ⓐtextual noteMind Cure. I think it is not a modern discovery. I think it has done its beneficent work in all the ages for a million years, among both the savage and the civilized. I think that all men, for a million years, have used it every day, unconsciously;Ⓐtextual note that we all still use it daily, unconsciously; andⒶtextual note that the physician is always making use of it when he says the hopeful and cheering word to his patient.

My familyⒶtextual note soon got interested in other matters, and weⒶtextual note presently ceased to keep our minds at their beneficent work upon our ailments, and therefore never found out just how much or how little our minds could be depended upon to benefit us. We certainly did persuade ourselves that our eyes were helped, and for a time I got along quite well enough without my glasses, but by and by I resumed them, and have not since discarded them. If Susy and her mother got rid, or partially rid, of their nearsightedness, it was only for a time; they became interested in other matters and the defect returned, and remained with them to the last. I feel quite certain that Christian Science heals many physical and mental ills; but I also feel just as certain that it could call itself by any other name and do the same work without any diminution of its effectiveness.

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That sketch is in some book of mine, and I wish I had it by me, so that I could refresh my memory as to its details; but the book is up stairsⒶtextual note, therefore we will let it go. The details are very curious and interesting. I wish it understood that I am now speaking from my grave, and that it is my desire, and also my command, that my heirs and assigns shall keep out of print what I am now about to say until I shall have been fertilizing the earth for twenty-five or thirty years. The genesis of the sketch is as follows:

About twenty-one years ago, Rev. Mr.Ⓐtextual note Twichell came over to our house one evening, full of a tale which he wanted to tell. It was the tale that is set forth in that sketch, and I jotted it down at once, so that I might be sure to get the details right. An English clergyman, on his travels, had been putting in the day with TwichellⒶtextual note; both of them had been chaplains in fighting regiments, and they had been having a pleasant time exchanging war reminiscences. In the course of the talk the Englishman told the tale that is narrated in the sketch. He would not name the hero of the sketch, and he defeated all of Joe’s theologically sly and ingenious efforts to get at that forbidden name. The Englishman was himself the chaplain of the sketch, and he said that, incredible, unbelievable, unthinkable, as the details of it were, they were nevertheless true.

I wrote the sketch and read it to the family. It naturally had a vivid interest for them, because they were privately aware that it was history; whereas to the outside reader it would pass for merely a more or less ingenious collocation of not very plausible inventions. It made enough of an impression upon Susy to move her to mention it in the Biography.

I doubted the story—I couldn’t help it; but Twichell did not doubt it. He said that the English chaplain was manifestly a sincere and truthful man, and that he was also as manifestly troubled about his confederate share in the lucky hero’s astonishing adventures. I put the manuscript in my pigeon-holes, and there it lay for six years, along with half a dozen other sketches and short stories; then, when we were about to start in the summer of 1891 for a long sojourn in Europe, I took those old sketches out and sold them to the magazines. The “Luck” sketch appeared in Harper’s Ⓐtextual note about the end of that year. A year and a halfⒶtextual note or two years afterward, I was going along the street one day in Rome, when an English gentleman stopped me, named me, asked if he was right in his guess, and when I said he was, we dropped into conversation and took a long walk together. By and by, when we had become pretty well acquainted, and the ice was all melted, he said,

“Mr. Clemens, shall you go to England?”

I said “It is likely, but I don’t know. My wife arranges the itinerary and saves me all that kind of trouble. I think it quite likely that we shall go.”

He said “Shall you take your tomahawk with you?”

“Why yes, if it shall seem best.”

“Well it will. Be advised. Take it with you.”

“Why?”

“Because of that sketch of yours entitled ‘Luck.’Ⓐtextual note That sketch is current in England, and you will surely need your tomahawk.”

[begin page 345]

“What makes you think so?”

“I think so because the hero of the sketch will naturally want your scalp, and will probably apply for it. Be advised. Take your tomahawk along.”

“Why, even with it I shan’tⒶtextual note stand any chance, because I shan’tⒶtextual note know him when he applies, and he will have my scalp before I know what his errand is.”

“Come, do you mean to say that you don’t know who the hero of that sketch is?”

There was surprise and incredulity in his tone. I said,

“Indeed I haven’t any idea who the hero of the sketch is.”

“Very well; he Ⓐtextual note knows who the hero of it is, and so does everybody in England, from the throne down. The tale is true. You have set down the facts veraciously; they were all known before you printed them; they were talked about privately long ago, but you are the first to make a public matter of them; also, you have added a detail to that history—you have added the chaplain. Nobody was able to guess, before, how that hero ever happened to get hisⒶtextual note start on his extraordinary career. The start had to be a miracle, apparently, but nobody could guess what the miracle was. The chaplain was the only man in the world, except the hero, who knew that deep and all-resolving secret. You have let it out, and now the career that followed is explained, justified, made plausible—let us say made possible. It was possible before, because it had happened, but it was not realizably possible until you revealed the crucial secret. Now then, you are speaking seriously when you tell me you don’t know who the hero of that sketch is?”

“Yes, I am speaking seriously. I haven’t any idea who it is. Who is it?”

“The high chief and topmost summit of the armies of England—Field-Marshall Lord Wolseley!Ⓐtextual note”

It nearly took my breath away. Several times, during the next two or three years, I had similar conversations with Englishmen on the Continent. They always said “It is Wolseley. Everybody knew those curious facts before you printed them.”

Nine years after I printed that sketch we were sojourning in London, and I went down into the city late on a Fourth of July night to attend a Fourth of July dinner, of Americans and Englishmen, and make a speech. It was so late when I arrived that half the guests had already departed, and only about two hundred remained. Choate was presiding, and was making a speech introductory of a British admiral. All of the row of chairs to his left, which had been occupied by distinguished guests, were vacant save one. I was passing along behind that row, intending to choose one of those seats, when I was accosted by that isolated celebrity, who put out his hand and said, smiling pleasantly and cordially,

“Oh sit down here by me, Mr. Clemens. I’ve been wanting to know you a long time. I am Lord WolseleyⒺexplanatory note.”

It caught me unprepared, and scared me so that I went white—so white that the rays from my face made the electric lights look yellow; but I sat down, and presently grew composed, and we had a most pleasant and friendly good time together; and if he had ever heard of that sketch of mine he did not manifest it in any way, and at twelve, midnight, I took my scalp home intact.