Now see how the world has moved since then. These small experiences of mine, which were too formidable at that time for admission to a grave magazine—if the magazine must allow them to appear as something above and beyond ‘accidents’ and ‘coincidences’—are trifling and commonplace now, since the flood of light recently cast upon mental telegraphy by the intelligent labours of the Psychical Society. But I think they are worth publishing, just to show what harmless and ordinary matters were considered dangerous and incredible eight or ten years ago.
As I have said, the bulk of this old manuscript was written in 1878; a later part was written from time to time, two, three, and four years afterwards. The ‘Postscript’ I add to-day.
May, ‘78.—Another of those apparently trifling things has happened to me which puzzle and perplex all men every now and then, keep them thinking an hour or two, and leave their minds barren of explanation or solution at last. Here it is—and it looks inconsequential enough, I am obliged to say. A few days ago I said: ‘It must be that Frank Millet doesn’t know we are in Germany, or he would have written long before this. I have been on the point of dropping him a line at least a dozen times during the past six weeks, but I always decided to wait a day or two longer, and see if we shouldn’t hear from him. But now I _will_ write.’ And so I did. I directed the letter to Paris, and thought, ‘_Now_ we shall hear from him before this letter is fifty miles from Heidelberg—it always happens so.’
True enough; but _why_ should it? That is the puzzling part of it. We are always talking about letters ‘crossing’ each other, for that is one of the very commonest accidents of this life. We call it ‘accident,’ but perhaps we misname it. We have the instinct a dozen times a year that the letter we are writing is going to ‘cross’ the other person’s letter; and if the reader will rack his memory a little he will recall the fact that this presentiment had strength enough to it to make him cut his letter down to a decided briefness, because it would be a waste of time to write a letter which was going to ‘cross,’ and hence be a useless letter. I think that in my experience this instinct has generally come to me in cases where I had put off my letter a good while in the hope that the other person would write.