On relating this to my friend Mr. Buchanan
Read, he informed me that _he_, too, had used the image, perhaps
referring to his poem called "The Twins." He thought Tennyson had used
it also. The parting of the streams on the Alps is poetically elaborated
in a passage attributed to "M. Loisne," printed in the Boston "Evening
Transcript" for October 23d, 1859. Captain, afterwards Sir Francis Head,
speaks of the showers parting on the Cordilleras, one portion going to
the Atlantic, one to the Pacific. I found the image running loose in my
mind, without a halter. It suggested itself as an illustration of
the will, and I worked the poem out by the aid of Mitchell's School
Atlas.--The spores of a great many ideas are floating about in the
atmosphere. We no more know where all the growths of our mind came from
than where the lichens which eat the names off from the gravestones
borrowed the germs that gave them birth. The two match-boxes were just
alike, but neither was a plagiarism.
In the morning I took to the same wagon once more, but, instead of James
Grayden, I was to have for my driver a young man who spelt his name
"Phillip Ottenheimer," and whose features at once showed him to be an
Israelite.
Pages:
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363