Then google's psychic advertisers won't like what I'm going to say...

Twain first returned from the dead in 1915 when he helped a woman named Ida 
Belle White write a book published in Kansas City, Missouri called SPIRITS 
DO RETURN.  It's a scarce book, and holds a place of honor on my shelf of 
"Mark Twain Hogwash" (inspired by Twain's own "library of literary 
hogwash.").  Twain next came back from the dead to help Emily Grant 
Hutchings write her book, JAP HERRON. She approached Harper Brothers in 1916 
and they declined to publish it, so she got it published by Mitchell 
Kennerley in 1917, and Harper got an injunction against Kennerley for use of 
the Mark Twain trademarked name and image. Kennerley recalled in 1940 that 
he didn't put up a fight and claimed that only a handful of copies had been 
sold and that all unsold copies were destroyed. Kennerley editions usually 
ran 400 to 1,000 copies, and way too many copies of that book survive for 
Kennerley's account to be true, but Kennerley was not known for his 
truth-telling. A Columbia professor named James Hyslop (gotta love that 
name!) studied the psychics who promoted JAP HERRON and published a book 
with a chapter about it in 1919 called CONTACT WITH THE OTHER WORLD. He also 
wrote an article later that year called `Cross Reference Experiments from 
Mark Twain' with further details. Hyslop was a serious fellow and his 
accounts are unintentionally hilarious --the best kind of hilarious, I 
think. This was all during a time when talking to the dead was experiencing 
a sort of revival, perhaps triggered the trauma of the First Wolrd War, and 
people like Arthur Conan Doyle were among the faithful being fleeced by con 
artists who produced "photographic evidence" of faires and spirits of the 
dead. Twain then kept his mouth shut for about fifty years until he decided 
to help Mildred Burris Swanson write her 1968 book, GOD BLESS U DAUGHTER, 
published in Independence, Missouri. Swanson's book is a sad case, 
apparently triggered by several deaths in Swanson's family and a business 
failure. Independence is a very short drive from Kansas City, so there must 
be something in the water (if you live in that area you might want to 
restrict your beverages to cocktails favored by Mark Twain). It's worth 
mentioning that all of these books involved ouija boards, so google 
advertisers who sell ouija boards might take note. But I must give fair 
warning to potential purchasers of ouija boards that if Mark Twain should 
speak to you from the astral plane and you publish a book about it, your own 
bound babblings will join those of Ida, Emily, Mildred, Hyslop (and a few 
others who shall remain nameless) on my shelf of Mark Twain Hogwash.

If Mark Twain has nothing better to do with his time in the afterlife he 
needs to get a death..

Kevin
@
Mac Donnell Rare Books
9307 Glenlake Drive
Austin TX 78730
512-345-4139
Member: ABAA, ILAB
*************************
You may browse our books at
www.macdonnellrarebooks.com

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gregg Camfield" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, February 17, 2012 12:34 PM
Subject: Google as psychic


> To heck with talking to Hemingway after the grave, Google is more 
> concerned
> with the money in "psychic" readings right now.  Google's scan of that
> e-mail now means my page is covered with advertisements for psychics and
> for something called "quantum jumping."
>
> "When other amusements fail," get your virtual palm read by the Googlers.
>
> Gregg
>
>>
>
>
>
> -----
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> 



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