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week--in a lifetime if he please. He will always find that an outside
something suggested the thought, something which he saw with his eyes or
heard with his ears or perceived by his touch--not necessarily to-day,
nor yesterday, nor last year, nor twenty years ago, but sometime or
other. Usually the source of the suggestion is immediately traceable,
but sometimes it isn't.
However, if you will examine every thought that occurs to you for the
next two days, you will find that in at least nine cases out of ten
you can put your finger on the outside suggestion--And that ought to
convince you that No. 10 had that source too, although you cannot at
present hunt it down and find it.
The idea of writing to me would have had to wait a long time if it
waited until your brain originated it. It was born of an outside
suggestion--Sir Thomas and my old Captain.
The hypnotist thinks he has invented a new thing--suggestion. This is
very sad. I don't know where my captain got his kerosene idea. (It was
forty-one years ago, and he is long ago dead.) But I know that it
didn't originate in his head, but it was born from a suggestion from the
outside.
Yesterday a guest said, "How did you come to think of writing 'The
Prince and the Pauper?'" I didn't. The thought came to me from the
outside--suggested by that pleasant and picturesque little history-book,
1209
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