Holmes
was disposed to accept "Mental Telegraphy" rather than mere chance as the
cause of this coincidence. Yet the anecdote of the challenge seems to
have been a favourite of his. It occurs in, "The Professor," in the
fifth section. Perhaps he told it pretty frequently; probably that is
why the printed version was sent to him; still, he was a little staggered
by the coincidence. There was enough of Cotton Mather in the man of
science to give him pause.
The form of Dr. Holmes's best known books, the set concerned with the
breakfast-table and "Over the Teacups," is not very fortunate. Much
conversation at breakfast is a weariness of the flesh. We want to eat
what is necessary, and then to go about our work or play. If American
citizens in a boarding-house could endure these long palavers, they must
have been very unlike the hasty feeders caricatured in "Martin
Chuzzlewit." Macaulay may have monologuised thus at his breakfast
parties in the Albany; but breakfast parties are obsolete--an
unregrettable parcel of things lost. The monologues, or dialogues, were
published serially in the _Atlantic Monthly_, but they have had a
vitality and a vogue far beyond those of the magazine _causerie_. Some
of their popularity they may owe to the description of the other
boarders, and to the kind of novel which connects the fortunes of these
personages. But it is impossible for an Englishman to know whether these
American types are exactly drawn or not.
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