"I remember very well," he said, "that I often thought I ought to write out my recollections of Kossuth, but I can't remember that I ever did so. I remember taking myself to task many times for my indolence in postponing a thing that I knew I ought to do, but that only makes the case the more inexplicable. When I scourged myself for neglecting the task, why didn't my memory remind me that I had actually discharged the duty? And now that I have read the reminiscences in print, why am I unable to recall the fact that I wrote them? The article fills several columns. Certainly I ought to have some recollection of the labor involved in writing so much. Are you entirely certain that the manuscript was mine?"
I sent to the composing room for the "copy" and showed it to him. As he looked it over he said:
"'Strange to say, on Club paper.' You remember Thackeray's Roundabout paper with that headline? It has a bearing here, for this is written on paper that the Century Club alone provides for the use of its members. I must, therefore, have written the thing at the Century Club, and that ought to resurrect some memory of it in my mind, but it doesn't. No. I have not the slightest recollection of having put that matter on paper."
At that point his wonderfully alert mind turned to another thought.
"Suppose you and I believed in the occult, the mystical, the so-called supernatural, as we don't," he said, "what a mystery we might make of this in the way of psychical manifestation—which usually belongs to the domain of psycho-pathology. Think of it! As I chastised myself in my own mind for my neglect to put these things on paper, your mind came under subjection to mine and you wrote them in my stead. So complete was the possession that your handwriting, which is clear and legible, became an exact facsimile of mine, which is obscure and difficult. Then you, being under possession, preserved no memory of having written the thing, while I, knowing nothing of your unconscious agency in the matter, had nothing to remember concerning it. Isn't that about the way the mysticists make up their 'facts' for the misleading of half-baked brains?"
In later years I related this incident to a distinguished half-believer in things mystical, adding Mr. Godwin's laughingly conjectural explanation of it, whereupon the reply came:
"May not that have been the real explanation, in spite of your own and Mr. Godwin's skepticism?"
I was left with the feeling that after all what Mr. Godwin had intended as an extravagant caricature was a veritable representation of a credulity that actually exists, even among men commonly accounted sane, and certainly learned. The reflection was discouraging to one who hopes for the progress of mankind through sanity of mind.