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.
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