THE MOUSE-TRAP QUOTATION

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 2 October 1928, Page 2

THE MOUSE-TRAP QUOTATION

WHO WROTE IT? Every now and then someone declares that they have unimpeachable evidence, which they take good care to conceal, that Emerson wrote tho famous "Mouse-trap quotation,” which runs: "If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a_ better mouse-trap than his neighbour, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” '

No one has yet produced any quotation from Emerson that contains 7 a reference to the mouse-trap, the woods, or the beaten track.

It is because Emerson wrote: “If,-a man lias good coyn .... or pigs to sell, or can make better chairs or

church organs than anybody else, you will find a broad, hard, beaten road to his liouso, though it be in the woods,” lie is to be credited with the authorship of a thought expressed in terser and, therefore, better language than one may perhaps admit. But, in so far as Emerson is concerned, we have to remember bis dictum on quotation and originality rendered into verse by Lowell: Tho’ 'old the thought and oft expressed, ’Tis his at last who says it best. Emerson wrote: "Next to the originator of a good sentence is tho first quoter of it.”

Elbert Hubbard was the author of the mouse-trap quotation. Where did Hubhard first use it? On a motto-card. He said : “Emerson never wrote that mousetrap craek-out-of-the-box.” “Great Thoughts.”