for The Prince and the Pauper; he should have written The Prince and
the Page, by the same author.


To Rev. F. Y. Christ, in New York:

REDDING, CONN., Aug., '08.
DEAR SIR,--You say "I often owe my best sermons to a suggestion received
in reading or from other exterior sources." Your remark is not quite in
accordance with the facts. We must change it to--"I owe all my thoughts,
sermons and ideas to suggestions received from sources outside of myself."
The simplified English of this proposition is--"No man's brains ever
originated an idea." It is an astonishing thing that after all these
ages the world goes on thinking the human brain machinery can originate a
thought.

It can't. It never has done it. In all cases, little and big, the
thought is born of a suggestion; and in all cases the suggestions come to
the brain from the outside. The brain never acts except from exterior
impulse.

A man can satisfy himself of the truth of this by a single process,--let
him examine every idea that occurs to him in an hour; a day; in a 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.