n 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 Dr. 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 stolen that dedication almost word for
word. I could not imagine how this curious thing happened; for I
knew one thing, for a dead certainty--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. Some years before I had been laid up a
couple of weeks in the Sandwich Islands, and had read and reread Dr.
Holmes's poems till my mental reservoir was filled with them to the
brim. The dedication lay on top and handy, so by and by I
unconsciously took it. Well, of course, I wrote to Dr. 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, for 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 good protoplasm for poetry. He could see by
that time that there wasn't anything mean about me; so we got along,
right from the start.--[Holmes in his letter had said: "I rather
think The Innocents Abroad will have many more readers than Songs in
Many Keys. . . You will be stolen from a great deal oftener than
you will borrow from other people."]

I have met Dr. Holmes many times since; and lately he said--However,
I am wandering wildly away from the one thing which I got on