Built around 1850, 54 West Thirty-third Street was a narrow, three-story brick house with a brownstone front. It stood four doors east of Sixth Avenue on the south side of the street and was the twenty-eighth house west of Fifth Avenue in that long and uninviting block. In the 1890s this was none too good a neighborhood. On the West Side the rich and fashionable were moving north beyond Fifty-ninth Street; trade was sweeping up Fifth Avenue toward Thirty-third Street, and many of the once luxurious old mansions had been replaced by business buildings. Worse, the district known as the Tenderloin was well entrenched in the area lying between Fifth and Eighth avenues, bounded on the south by Twenty fourth Street and on the north by Fortieth Street. Peppered with saloons, bagnios, dance halls, and gambling houses, the Tenderloin was the center of Manhattan's more earthy night life and, with the notable exception of a few years in the mid-nineties, carried on its activities with a zest unrestrained, indeed encouraged, by the city police. Those few exceptional years-the period, as it happened, between November of 1894 and November of 1897-marked an interlude of law, order, and decorum such as had never before been seen in this otherwise obstreperous district and was never to be seen again.

The man who had served to bring about this remarkable hiatus in the life of the Tenderloin was the Reverend Dr. Charles H. Parkhurst, whom Swamiji had met at a dinner party in the spring of 1894. If Dr. Parkhurst had deliberately timed his efforts (as, of course, he did not) so that the district would present a scrubbed face by the beginning of 1895, he could not have timed them better. He fired off what he was to call "the first gun of the campaign" on Sunday, February 14, 1893, delivering from the pulpit of his fashionable Madison Square Presbyterian Church a vigorous and resounding denunciation, not of New York's districts of vice themselves, as many a minister had done before him, but of the city's corrupt political leaders. Having struck at the formidable powers of Tammany Hall, the reverend was called before the grand jury and told either to retract his statements or to substantiate them with concrete facts. A courageous man, he chose the latter course. Disguised as a roisterer, the frail, fastidious, and scholarly pastor underwent a three-weeks' "going down into the disgusting depths of this Tammany debauched town. He emerged with sufficient eye-witness evidence of the collusion between the City Hall, the Police Department, and the leaders of vice and crime to convince any jury of the validity of his charges. "In one day less than a month," a historian of the period writes, "Dr. Parkhurst had stirred up more controversy, more recrimination and denunciation over commercialized vice than any of his crusading predecessors in the past thirty years.

It was not, however, until November of' 1894, when the Tammany Hall politicos were voted out of power by a now aroused electorate, that a reign of law and order descended upon the Tender1oin. The change under a new reform administration was drastic. The street became safe, the police incorruptible, and scores of the more prominent denizens of the district fled-many of them to Chicago. It was, of course, only a matter of time before the old state of affairs returned. At the next city election in November of 1897, the Tammany Hall "bosses" were restored to power, and the Tenderloin burst once again into riotous life. But Dr. Parkhurst's sudden and inspired crusade had served to dean up the theretofore uncleanable Tenderloin for a three-year period-a period which embraced the yeas of Swamiji’s residence in its vicinity.

With the disappearance of the more disreputable characters and activities of the neighborhood, 54 West Thirty-third Street was not an unthinkable place to live. The block’s respectable elements were now predominant; toward Fifth Avenue stood the small and exclusive Cambridge Hotel, so sedate and reserved that it had no lobby is which to loiter. Directly across from this “squat red-brick establishment," on the northwest corner of Fifth Avenue and Thirty-Third Street, the towers of the brand-new and opulent Waldorf Hotel rose a spectacular thirteen stories above the cobbled street. The shiny black carriages and hansom cabs drawn up at its Thirty third Street entrance and the coming and goings of the fashionable shed a certain luster over its surroundings. Still, Swamiji's quarters far down the block, bordering not only on the shadow of the Sixth Avenue El but on that of a bad reputation could not by any stretch the imagination be called select. It has been generally assumed that Landsberg, with Swamiji's consent, chose such quarters because of financial considerations, and this may have been largely the case.*_x000d_ _x000d_ * In her “ Memories of India and Indians” (Prabuddha Bharata, May 1932) Sister Devamata gives another reason for Swamiji’s choice of lodging. “When Swami Vivekananda came to New York,” she writes, “he encountered a strong racial prejudice, which created many hardships for him both in his public and his private life. Among other things it was extremely difficult for him to secure a proper lodging. Land ladies invariably assured him that they had no feeling themselves, but they were afraid they would lose (cont.)their boarders if they took an Asiatic into the house. This forced the Swami to accept inferior quarters." There is not much evidence for this view, While Swamiji did indeed encounter a strong racial prejudice in the southern cities of America, notably Baltimore, he seems to have had little difficulty in this respect in cosmopolitan New York, where he knew many influential people. Nor, as we know, did he go from door to door in New York, seeking a place to live; whether or not he would have been turned away if he had done so is a moot point.

It is interesting to read the description of the Swami written by an Edger G. Beall, M.D. for the Phrenological Journal of New York. The following is an extract from the article, which was reproduced in part in the Indian Mirror of October 5, 1895:

Swami Vivekananda is in many respects an excellent specimen of his race. He is five feet eight and a half inches in height and weighs one hundred and seventy pounds. His head measures twenty one and three-fourths inches in circumference by fourteen from car to car across the top. He is thus very well proportioned as regards both body and brain. His instincts are too feminine to be compatible with much conjugal sentiment. Indeed, he says himself that he never had the slightest feeling of love for any woman. As he is opposed to war and teaches a religion of unmixed gentleness, we should expect his head to he narrow in the region of the cars at the scat of combativeness and destructiveness, and such is the case. The same deficiency is much marked in the diameters a little farther up at secretiveness and acquisitiveness. He dismisses the whole subject of finance and ownership by saying that he has no property and does not want to be bothered with any. While such sentiment sounds odd to American cars, it must be confessed that his face, at least, shows more marks of contentment than the visages of Russell Sage, Hetty Green, and many others of our multi-millionaires. Firmness and conscientiousness are fully developed. Benevolence is quite conspicuous. Music is well indicated in the width of the temples. The prominent eyes betoken superior memory of words and explain much of the eloquence he has displayed in his lectures. The upper forehead is well developed at causality and in comparison to which is added a fine endowment of suavity and sense of human nature". Summing up the organization, it will be sect! that kindness, sympathy, and philosophical intelligence, with ambition to achieve success in the direction of higher educational work are his predominant characteristics. Being a graduate of the Calcutta University, he speaks English almost as perfectly as if he were a native of England. If he does no more than continue the development of that splendid spirit of charity, which was displayed at the World's Fair, his mission among us will certainly prove eminently successful.

19 W., 38 St.,_x000d_ New York, 1895_x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ . . . Meddle not with so-called social reform, for there cannot be any reform without spiritual reform first. Who told you that I want social reform? Not I. Preach the Lord--say neither good nor bad about the superstitions and diets. Do not lose heart, do not lose faith in your Guru, do not lose faith in God. So long as you possess these three, nothing can harm you, my child. I am growing stronger every day. Work on, my brave boys._x000d_ Ever yours with blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda

On the New Year's day of 1895, he paid a surprise visit td the Hale family at Chicago. By the third week of January he came to stay for a time in New York, to hold an intensive course of classes, and, as he had long wanted, to train a few disciples. "I did a good deal of platform work in this country last year, and received plenty of applause," he wrote to a friend on April 24, 1895, "but found that I was only working for myself. It is the patient up building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity. So this year I am hoping to work along this line-training up to practical Advaita realization a small band of men and women. I do not know how far I shall suceed. The West is the field for work, if a man wants to benefit humanity, rather than his own particular sect or country." Thus early in 1895 began a new phase of Swami Vivekananda's mission in the West.

In the last days of January 1895, Swami Vivekananda established himself in lodgings at 54 West 33rd Street in the city of New York. It was a poor and unfashionable neighbourhood, but he was tired and disgusted with the fame he had acquired, and he felt that the interest he had awakened was not what he wanted; to his mind it was too superficial. He desired earnest minded followers whom he could teach freely, while living in a place of his own. Thus he announced that he would hold classes free of charge in his own quarters. Many came, some from curiosity, others in earnest sincerity, "to learn the ancient teachings of India and the all-embracing character of its philosophy … and, above all, to hear the constant lessons of the Swami on world-wide universal toleration". Miss Sarah Ellen Waldo of Brooklyn, who became one of the Swami's foremost disciples, writes as follows, taking up the thread of her narrative, from the time of his lectures before the Brooklyn Ethical Association.

A few of those who had heard him in Brooklyn now began to go to the place where he lived in New York. It was just an ordinary room on the second floor of a lodging house. The classes grew with astonishing rapidity, and as the little room filled to overflowing it became very picturesque. The Swami himself sat on the floor and most of his audience likewise. The marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa and even the corner wash-stand helped to furnish seats for the constantly increasing numbers. The door was left open and the overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. And those first classes! How intensely interesting they were! Who that was privileged to attend them can ever forget them! The Swami so dignified yet so simple, so gravely earnest, so eloquent, and the close ranks of students, forgetting all inconveniences, hanging breathless on his every word!

It was a fit beginning for a movement that has since grown to such grand proportions. In this unpretentious way did Swami Vivekananda inaugurate the work of teaching Vedanta philosophy in New York. The Swami gave his services free as air. The rent was paid by voluntary subscriptions; and when these were found insufficient, the Swami hired a hall and gave secular lectures on India and devoted the proceeds to the maintenance of the classes. He said that Hindu teachers of religion felt it to be their duty to support their classes and the students too, if they were unable to care for themselves, and the teachers would willingly make any sacrifice they possibly could to assist a needy disciple.

The classes began in February 1895, and lasted until June; but, long before that time they had outgrown. Their small beginnings and had removed downstairs to occupy an entire parlour floor and extension. The classes were held nearly every morning [from eleven to one o'clock] and on several evenings in every week. Some Sunday lectures were also given, and there were “question” classes to help those to whom the teaching was so new and strange that they were desirous to have an opportunity for more extended explanation.

For a time after opening his New York classes, Swamiji continued to sleep at the Guernseys' house at 528 Fifth Avenue, but soon, no doubt for the sake of convenience, as well as for total independence, he moved, bed and board, to his lodging. Like the Hales, the Guernseys whom Swamiji had first met in New York in the early part of 1894, had opened their house to him. Dr. Egbert Guernsey was a prominent physician, a well-known philanthropist, writer, editor, and founder-director of various important journals, clubs, and medical institutions in New York. He was, moreover, well loved for his large heart and nobility of soul.* That the Guernseys looked upon Swamiji with parental affection and held him in high esteem and that his move from their home had caused no rupture or misunderstanding between himself and these good people is clearly seen by the following letter that the doctor wrote to Mrs. Bull in March of this year, shortly after one of her visits to New York._x000d_ _x000d_ * For more about Dr. Egbert Guernsey, see prophetic Mission-2, chapter nine, section two.

Union League Club_x000d_ New York_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull_x000d_ I was sorry not to have had the pleasure of meeting you when you called the other day renewing our Alaska [?] acquaintance, which will ever remain a bright spot in my memory, and thanking you for your interest in, and kindness to the Swami who by his kindness of heart, great intelligence, purity and nobility of character has endeared himself to me almost like a son. It is a gratification to me to know that ladies like yourself fully appreciate the rare qualities of head and heart, of one, whom I shall always be proud to call my friend._x000d_ The Swami from time to time has formed a part of my family for several months. Always welcome, we have all of us derived both profit and pleasure from the rich stores of a mind full of thought in which he seemed to have been able in his investigations of spiritual matters to have eliminated the discordant elements for the true and harmonious. Hoping to meet you at no distant day _x000d_ Very truly_x000d_ Egbert Guernsey

Even apart from its location, the lodging at 54 West Thirty ¬third Street was a far cry from the Guernseys' Fifth Avenue mansion. From a few hints found in various sources one can deduce that Swamiji's rooms were on the second floor. The front room, facing the street, served as his headquarters; the other was Landsberg's bedroom, for which he (Landsberg) paid half the rent and which doubled at times as a kitchen, there being nowhere else to install the gas cooking stove that a kind friend had donated. (There was also a community kitchen in the house for the use of lodgers, where, more than likely, Swamiji created many a meal.) His room contained, we know, a sofa, a marble-topped dresser, and a corner wash stand with drain boards. Most probably it also possessed a couch, a small round table, one or two upholstered chairs, a patterned carpet, net curtains at the window, gaslight fixtures, and, one trusts, a heating arrangement of some sort, for the winter was cold, and in early February a heavy blizzard whipped the city. The room could not have been large-the house itself was only twenty feet wide-but here Swamiji held classes (until they overflowed), received visitors, gave interviews, wrote articles, translated passages from the Sanskrit books which he was now having sent from India, read, studied, and often entered into the state of deep meditation that was natural to him and always at his command.

The house (and no doubt its furnishings) being almost fifty years old and having seen many lodgers come and go, must, on the whole, have been worn with use and time. But whatever its lack of elegance; Swamiji was content with it; that there were those who strongly disapproved made no difference to him at all. Two months or so later he was to write to Mrs. Bull in retrospect:

Every one of my friends thought it would end in nothing, this my getting up quarters all by myself, and that no ladies will ever come there. Miss Hamlin [a friend of Mrs. Bull's] especially thought that "she" or "her right sort of people" were way up from such things as to go and listen to a man who lives by himself in a poor lodging. But the "right kind" came for all that, day and night, and she too. Lord, how hard it is for a man to believe in Thee and Thy mercies! Shiva! Shiva! Where is the right kind and where is the bad, mother? It is all He! In the tiger and in the lamb, in the saint and sinner all He! In Him I have taken my refuge, body, soul, and Atman.

According to another of Miss MacLeod's memories, Swamiji's power once assumed for her concrete form, vivid and overwhelming: Although this reminiscence comes to us third hand, its main point has no doubt remained intact through its retelling. To judge from Miss MacLeod's description of the size of Swamiji's audience at the time, her experience occurred not at the first class she attended, but at one held several weeks later in the downstairs rooms of the lodging house. The story as she told it years afterward to a swami of the Ramakrishna Order (then a brahmacharin) and as he, in turn, retold it years later to a group of devotees at Belur Math, one of whom took notes, has come out thus:

I first met Swamiji in New York when my elder sister Mrs. Sturges had her days of courtship with Mr. Leggett. . . . At that time I used to read the Gita, translated by Mohini Mohan Chatterjee. One day we two sisters came to New York by the Hudson River, and went to listen to Swami Vivekananda's lecture. The subject of the talk was the Gita. More than one hundred persons were Present, they were all scattered in the room: When Swamiji started speaking . . . I lifted my eyes and saw with these very eyes (she pointed to her own eyes) Krishna himself standing there and preaching the Gita. That was my first wonderful vision. I stared and stared . . . I saw only the figure, and all else vaniashed.

These Brooklyn "conversations," to which an admission fee of fifty cents was charged, were arranged after Swamiji had given his first lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association on December 30, 1894. As Miss Waldo wrote, "his success was immediate . . . And a course of lectures there and at other places in Brooklyn soon followed. Although we have no more information at present about Swamiji's course of parlor lectures in Brooklyn, many of those who attended them no doubt came also to his classes across the Bridge, as did Miss Waldo herself.

But his parlor lectures in New York City must have drawn even more people to his lodgings. What was probably the earliest of these he gave in the last week of January at Miss Thuraby's apartment in Gramercy Park, one of the most exclusive residential squares of the city. (Miss Thursby no doubt invited many of her friends, including Sara Bull, who was then in New York, and it may well have been on this occasion that an incident took place which led to a fiery scene and a fiery letter--but of this more later.)_x000d_ There is some evidence that in the early months of the year Swamiji also gave a parlor lecture at the Guernseys’ and that it was this lecture which drew to his classes Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox, a well-known popular poetess of the day, and her husband, to whom she referred as “the Man.” In her memoirs written in 1907 Mrs. Wilcox recalled:

Twelve years ago I chanced one evening to hear that a certain teacher of philosophy from India, a man named Vivekananda, was to lecture a block from my home in New York._x000d_ (Let us interrupt Mrs. Wilcox here with the observation that in 1895 she and her husband lived at 125 West Fortyfourth Street. As far as can be determined in the light of our present knowledge, there was only one place a block away from the Wilcox home where Swamiji might have given a lecture at this period, and that was the Guernseys’ house at Fifth Avenue and Forty-fourth Street. One comes to the tentative conclusion, then, that the Wilcoxes had heard that Swamiji was giving a parlor lecture at the Guernseys’ house.* That this took place early in the year becomes evident as Mrs. Wilcox’s memoirs continue:)_x000d_ _x000d_ * In her autobiographical book The Worlds and I (1918) Ella Wheeler Wilcox gives a somewhat different account of the first time she heard Swamiji lecture. The pertinent paragraphs read:_x000d_ “The year following the Chicago Exposition and Congress of Religions, the East Indian Monk, Swami Vivekananda, came to New York and gave a course of lectures. My husband was then passing through a business crisis which required all of his courage and self-control. We first heard of these lectures in a some what curious way. One evening, just after dinner, the postman brought a letter; it was from a stranger, addressed to me, and had been three times forwarded. It told of a lecture to be given by Vivekananda, giving the time and the place, and closed, saying; (cont) `I feel sure, from what I read of your writings, that you will be interested.' The hall where the lecture was to be given was just two blocks from our apartment, and the date was just one hour from the time I received the letter. We had no other engagement for that evening, and my husband proposed going._x000d_ "We reached the hall just as Vivekananda was going on the stage in his robe and turban. We sat in the very last seat of the hall, clasping each other's hands as the impressive orator gave a never-to-be-forgotten talk on things spiritual. When we went out my husband said: 'I feel that man knows more of God than we do. We must both hear him again.'_x000d_ "My husband attended with me not only a number of evening lectures, but on several occasions came from his business office during the day to listen to the Swami. I remember him saying, as we went out on the street one day: 'This man makes me rise above every business worry; he makes me feel how trivial is the whole material view of life and how limitless is the life beyond. I can go back to my troubles at the office now with new strength.’ " (Wilcox, The World and I, New York: George H. Doran Co., 1918, pp. 110—I I)._x000d_ According to the above, the first lecture the Wilcoxes heard does not seem to have been given in a private residence. Where it was given, then, one cannot say with any certainty at all. We can, however, be reasonably certain that the time was the early part of 1895.

We went out of curiosity,… and before we had been ten minutes in the audience, we felt ourselves lifted up into an atmosphere so rarefied, so vital, so wonderful, that we sat spell-bound and almost breathless, to the end of the lecture.

When it was over we went out with new courage, new hope, new strength, new faith, to meet life’s daily vicissitudes. “This is the Philosophy, this is the idea of God, the religion which I have been seeking,” said the Man. And for months afterwards he went with me to hear Swami Vivekananda explain the old religion and to gather from his wonderful mind jewels of truth and thoughts of helpfulness and strength. It was that terrible winter of financial disasters, when banks failed and stocks went down like broken balloons and business men walked through the dark valleys of despair and the whole world seemed topsy-turvy. . . . Sometimes after sleepless nights of worry and anxiety, the Man would go with me to hear the Swami lecture, and then he would come out into the winter gloom and walk down the street smiling and say, "It is all right. There is nothing to worry over." And I would go back to my own duties and pleasures with the same uplifted sense of soul and enlarged vision.

Later in the season, as Swamiji's classes would be drawing to a close, Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote of them to her friend Mrs. Rate Tannatt Woods of Salem, Massachusetts, who, in the days before the Parliament of Religions, had been Swa¬miji's hostess. One of her letters, dated "May, 1895," read:

I was listening to Vivekananda this morning an hour. How honored by fate you must feel to have been allowed to be of service to this Great Soul. I believe him to be the re-incarnation of some great Spirit--perhaps Buddha -perhaps Christ. He is so simple--so sincere, so pure, so unselfish. To have listened to him all winter is the greatest privilege life has ever offered me. It would be surprising to me that people could misunderstand or malign such a soul if I did not know how Buddha and Christ were persecuted and lied about by small inferiors. His discourse this morning was most uplifting-his mere presence is that. His absolute sinking of self is what I like. I am so tired of people who place the capital "I" before truth-and God. "To do good for good's sake"-with no expectation or desire of reward, and never to speak of what we have done-but to keep on working for the love of doing God's work--is Vivekananda's grand philosophy of life. He always makes me feel ashamed that I have ever thought for one moment I was burdened or that I ever spoke of any good act of my own.

Indeed, to his listeners it would often seem as if the veils that blind the spiritual vision were rent, and the Swami would stand before them a veritable knower of the Self. _x000d_ Another person who wrote of the profound impact of his lectures of this period was the well-known author and poet Ella Wheeler Wilcox. Referring to her meeting with the Swami in an early month of 1895, she wrote as follows in the New York American of May 26, 1907:

Although Mrs. Bull’s concern over Swamiji’s outspokenness was natural enough, it was unavailing; he would always oppose whatever he found to be false wherever he found it. But while he went his own way and while the word power has often been used in describing him, that independence and that power had their source in profound inner peace and were, for this very reasons, unerring and beneficent. It had always been so, but now, as he started and conducted his work in New York, his spirit seems to have been more luminous, his power more benevolent than ever.

A year and a half of mixing with hundreds, thousands of people had created within him, on the one hand, a strong desire to bless and enlighten the common man, and, on the other hand, a resistance to Public life and a need to throw off the restricting and burdensome circumstances of a traveling lecturer. By the time he arrived at New York he felt a great urge to teach Americans and, simultaneously, as great an urge to live once again the unfettered life of a Hindu monk. To Swamiji the satisfaction of both these urges was possible. Breaking away from the demands of his rich and fashionable friends and taking up his own quarters, he there lived the austere and spiritually intense life of the sannyasin. Not only did he remain in a high state of spiritual consciousness, but he would plunge at the slightest opportunity into the depths of meditation. He would recite texts from Sanskrit scriptures, he would repeat the name of God, or caught up in a mood of divine love he would sing devotional songs from the depths of his heart. And who can say how many hours in the silence of the night he remained lost in the abyss of divine union or what experiences were his while the world slept? And when one thinks of his exalted state one cannot but feel that he lived both day and night on the very edge of the Infinite. “He literally radiated spirituality. . . . An atmosphere of benediction, of peace, of power and of inexpressible luminosity was felt by one and all who came to his classes.

It is touching to find the Swami teaching Americans in tile fashion of the ancient gurus. Though many who attended his classes had ample money, he would charge no fees or teaching. Religion, to his mind, should, be given free, for it is something not to be bartered but realized. In addition to his regular classes, visitors flocked to him constantly, some treating him with great personal reverence, others scrutinizing his character and his theories; still others were newspaper reporters and editors of magazines, interested in his name and teachings. The Swami now felt that he was carrying on his message slowly, perhaps, but surely and on right rioting.

As we have seen in an earlier chapter, he had grown tired of moving here and there, spreading his message, over a wide area; he had wanted for many months to teach and give intensive training to a "select few". Now at last he was able to do so. Formerly, he had stood in the limelight of public attention, and to a superficial-minded person that might have spelled success. But the Swami knew better, for he had the sannyasi's instinct for sounding the reality and true worth of things. Others in his position might never have ventured to break with the lecture bureau and thereby incur financial loss; nor would they have readily abandoned the surroundings and invitations of persons of wealth and social position for the simple and yet intense life that he deemed necessary for giving 'his message. Indeed, he far preferred his simple fare to the most sumptuous of meals, though seldom did he lack the opportunity to dine out.

Trusting in Truth and in God, knowing that he was being guided, he now worked strenuously on. He gave his whole time to teaching by means of talks and lectures, and regularly every day he trained some chosen followers to quiet the mind in the silence of meditation. Teaching his students how to meditate, he would himself drift into the meditative state, often so deeply that he could not readily be brought back to normal consciousness, and one by one his students would steal quietly away. When the Swami emerged from such states, he would feel impatient with himself, for he desired that the teacher should be uppermost in him, rather than the yogi; he tried hard therefore to avoid such incidents. While meditating privately with one or two, he would instruct them how to bring him back by uttering a Mantra or a divine name should he be carried by the force of meditation into Samadhi. Often he would he found singing Sanskrit hymns in gentle tones, or murmuring to himself some of the great verses of the Vedas and the Upanishads. He literally radiated spirituality. Indeed, the same atmosphere of ecstasy and insight that hovered about the Master at Dakshineswar now hovered about the Swami in these strange surroundings in a far-off land. An atmosphere of benediction, of peace, of power, and of inexpressible luminosity was felt by all who came to his classes.

The Swami's New York classes, held during the first part of 1895, dealt largely with Raja-yoga and Jnana-yoga. Through Raja-yoga he taught the students the path of practical spirituality—how to acquire inner control of the senses, how to still the mind, how to subordinate sense impulses to reason, in short, how to spiritualize the whole personality. He held regular classes in which he taught the students to concentrate the mind; for meditation, he held, was the key to spirituality. The Swami himself spent long hours in meditation, sitting cross-legged on the floor in yogi fashion. He was indeed pre-eminently fitted to teach the practices of meditation. Having lived in a constant atmosphere of spiritual austerity with his Master, having practised many forms of meditations under his guidance, his life a "roaring fire of spirituality", and his mind informed with all the details and intricacies of the different states of meditation, he was qualified to know the tendency of each disciple and to develop each according to his special tendencies, giving each a special ideal and a special form of meditation. Thus, under his systematic and always inspired guidance, the students undertook physical and spiritual exercises by which equilibrium of body and mind could be established. They learnt how to overcome physical consciousness and to discover divinity within; they learnt that religion was not a question of belief but of practice and realization.

In order that they might achieve success and avoid physical and mental disorders—even insanity—in the practice of Raja-yoga, the Swami enjoined his students to lead absolutely pure lives and to cat simple, Sattvika food. Thus his classes took on the aspect of monastic gatherings, permitting the highest flights of philosophy and of spiritual recollectedness. He warned his students against the occult, pointing out that psychic power were impediments to real spiritual progress and only diverted one from the right path. Indeed, he was vehement in his denunciation of sects or persons who subordinated spirituality to the acquirement of such powers. He knew that a man becomes divine if he strives to be so; for this reason he said, following the manner of his own Master, "Seek only after one thing, and that, God! "

The flow of life in the Western world interested the Swami; when his hours were not employed in meditation, in private or class teaching, in lecturing, or in replying to various correspondents, they were consumed in the pursuit of secular knowledge, which he absorbed and turned to spiritual account.

Thus day after day, living in the midst of the turbulent metropolis of New York, he was in a constant atmosphere of intense recollectedness and deep intellectual work. That he maintained the meditative habit throughout his Western life was remarkable, for disturbances were innumerable. Yet one sees him in his New York retreat, in the morning or the evening quiet, or at dead of night meditating. And apart from his meditation practices and meditative states, he was often lost to the outer world. His face often took on that far-off look, showing his mind withdrawn from all mortal concerns and merged in the thought of the Absolute. While those about him would be talking vivaciously, it would be noticed that his eyes would grow fixed, his breath would come slower and slower till there would be a pause, and then a gradual return to consciousness of his environment. It is said of him:

His friends knew these things and provided for them. If he walked into the house to pay a call and forgot to speak, or if he was found in a room, in silence, no one disturbed him, though he would sometimes rise and render assistance to an intruder, without breaking the train of thought. Thus his interest lay within, and not without. To the scale and range of his thought his conversation was of course our only clue.

As time went on, the Swami found himself winning, to a greater and still greater extent, the confidence, the respect, and even the reverence of large numbers of people in America. Many of these devoted themselves heart and soul to his work and became his followers in a definite sense, while a number of liberal minded Christian clergymen greatly admired him and stood behind his cause. Yet, in spite of the appreciation of the beauty of his character and of the grandeur of his mission and teachings, the path before the Swami was never a smooth one. With his great veneration for Jesus the Christ, which all who knew him were aware of, it is almost unbelievable that he was continuously persecuted by sectarian and bigoted Christians, who, not satisfied with criticizing his work and philosophy, made attacks upon his character. In the last chapter we have seen how virulent were the Swami's detractors and how they were subdued only by the public recognition in India of his Western work. But though his critics became powerless to harm him, they never entirely abandoned their efforts to do so. For instance, we have seen that in the early part of 1895 the Brooklyn followers of Ramabai, the Christianized Hindu social reformer, publicly denounced the Swami because of his denial that the Hindus regularly mistreated their child widows. But if the Swami was never without his detractors, he was also never without his defenders those who recognized his intellectual and spiritual genius, his impeccable purity. It had been, for example, Dr. Lewis G. Janes, President of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, who had championed him against the ladies of the Ramabai Circle, using his pen as his lance in strong and telling letters to the editors of the leading Brooklyn newspapers.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, the Swami already had a centre, but the Vedanta Society that he had founded in New York in November of 1894 was still a bare nucleus, a committee of his friends, who attempted to help him in various ways. He evidently hoped it would grow into a full-fledged, though loosely organized, society to represent his universal and unifying teachings—and later on it was indeed to do so. In the mean while, however, the Swami, living and working in the freedom of the true sannyasi, ready to sacrifice everything, even his life, for his cause, did not easily suffer any attempt to restrict his independence of action. He found that some of his helpers, devoted and well meaning as they might be, interfered in his method of carrying out his work. Perhaps some stilted Boston lady would ask him— he who had shaken the very soul of the Parliament of Religions and was a born teacher of men—to take elocution lessons! Another would worry him about how to organize; another would say: Swami, you must do so and so; you must live in better surroundings, you must fashionable in order to reach and influence society people; or another: you must pacify the Christian ministers. At all this the Swami would become fierce with indignation and exclaim, "Why should I be bound down by all this nonsense!" He would come out with words of power, revealing the stuff he was made of.

"New York is a grand and good place," Swami Vivekananda had written in August of 1894. "The New York people have a tenacity of purpose unknown in any other city, New York was also, he had remarked a few weeks later, "the head, hand, and purse of the country. The great, sophisticated, and polyglot metropolis was indeed a wellspring of new ideas; it was creative and enterprising; it was the center of all the arts; it was rich, generous, and throbbing with vitality; everything was there. Thus when Swami Vivekananda decided in the beginning of 1895 to settle down to teach, after a year and some three months of strenuous lecture touring throughout the Midwest and East, he chose New York for his headquarters, rather than, say, Boston or Chicago; and it would be here that his mission to the West would enter its years of full maturity.

Brooklyn_x000d_ 20th January, 1895_x000d_ (Written to Mrs. Ole Bull whom Swamiji called "Dhira Mata", the "Steady Mother" on the occasion of the loss of her father )_x000d_ . . . I had a premonition of your father's giving up the old body and it is not my custom to write to anyone when a wave of would-be inharmonious Maya strikes him. But these are the great turning points in life, and I know that you are unmoved. The surface of the sea rises and sinks alternately, but to the observant soul--the child of light--each sinking reveals more and more of the depth and of the beds of pearls and coral at the bottom. Coming and going is all pure delusion. The soul never comes nor goes. Where is the place to which it shall go when all space is in the soul ? When shall be the time for entering and departing when all time is in the soul ? The earth moves, causing the illusion of the movement of the sun; but the sun does not move. So Prakriti, or Maya, or Nature, is moving, changing, unfolding veil after veil, turning over leaf after leaf of this grand book--while the witnessing soul drinks in knowledge, unmoved, unchanged. All souls that ever have been, are, or shall be, are all in the present tense and--to use a material simile--are all standing at one geometrical point. Because the idea of space does occur in the soul, therefore all that were ours, are ours, and will be ours, are always with us, were always with us, and will be always with us. We are in them. They are in us. Take these cells {diagram}. Though each separate, they are all nevertheless inseparably joined at AB. There they are one. Each is an individual, yet all are one at the axis AB. None can escape from that axis, and however broken or torn the circumference, yet by standing at the axis, we may enter any one of the chambers. This axis is the Lord. There we are one with Him, all in all, and all in God._x000d_ The cloud moves across the face of the moon, creating the illusion that the moon is moving. So nature, body, matter moves on, creating the illusion that the soul is moving. Thus we find at last that, that instinct (or inspiration?) which men of every race, whether high or low, have had to feel, viz. the presence of the departed about them, is true intellectually also._x000d_ Each soul is a star, and all stars are set in that infinite azure, that eternal sky, the Lord. There is the root, the reality, the real individuality of each and all. Religion began with the search after some of these stars that had passed beyond our horizon, and ended in finding them all in God, and ourselves in the same place. The whole secret is, then, that your father has given up the old garment he was wearing and is standing where he was through all eternity. Will he manifest another such garment in this or any other world? I sincerely pray that he may not, until he does so in full consciousness. I pray that none may be dragged anywhither by the unseen power of his own past action. I pray that all may be free, that is to say, may know that they are free. And if they are to dream again, let us pray that their dreams be all of peace and bliss. . . ._x000d_ Yours etc.,_x000d_ Vivekananda

On the Sundays of January 20, February 3 and 17, and April 7, as well as on the Monday of February 25, Swamiji delivered lectures before the Ethical Association in Brooklyn, which might be called "secular" and which was primarily on the subject of Indian culture and religion. Although he gave these lectures during the period under discussion, they do not in subject matter or tone belong to the second phase of his western work, with which this book is concerned, and thus they have been dealt with in a previous volume. Nevertheless, the money Swamiji earned by them must have helped in some measure to support his New York work.

(Brooklyn Standard Union, January 21, 1895)_x000d_ _x000d_ Swami Vivekananda, after being presented to the audience by Dr. Janes, president of the Ethical Association, said in part:_x000d_ "The product of the slums of any nation cannot be the criterion of our judgment of that nation. One may collect the rotten, worm-eaten apples under every apple tree in the world, and write a book about each of them, and still know nothing of the beauty and possibilities of the apple tree. Only in the highest and best can we judge a nation--the fallen are a race by themselves. Thus it is not only proper, but just and right, to judge a custom by its best, by its ideal._x000d_ "The ideal of womanhood centres in the Arian race of India, the most ancient in the world's history. In that race, men and women were priests, 'sabatimini [saha-dharmini],' or co-religionists, as the Vedas call them. There every family had its hearth or altar, on which, at the time of the wedding, the marriage fire was kindled, which was kept alive, until either spouse died, when the funeral pile was lighted from its spark. There man and wife together offered their sacrifices, and this idea was carried so far that a man could not even pray alone, because it was held that he was only half a being, for that reason no unmarried man could become a priest. The same held true in ancient Rome and Greece._x000d_ "But with the advent of a distinct and separate priest-class, the co-priesthood of the woman in all these nations steps back. First it was the Assyrian race, coming of Semitic blood, which proclaimed the doctrine that girls have no voice, and no right, even when married. The Persians drank deep of this Babylonian idea, and by them it was carried to Rome and to Greece, and everywhere woman degenerated._x000d_ "Another cause was instrumental in bringing this about--the change in the system of marriage. The earliest system was a matriarchal one; that is, one in which the mother was the centre, and in which the girls acceded to her station. This led to the curious system of the Polianders [polyandrous], where five or six brothers often married one wife. Even the Vedas contain a trace of it in the provision, that when a man died without leaving any children, his widow was permitted to live with another man, until she became a mother; but the children she bore did not belong to their father, but to her dead husband. In later years the widow was allowed to marry again, which the modern idea forbids her to do._x000d_ "But side by side with these excrescences a very intense idea of personal purity sprang up in the nation. On every page the Vedas preach personal purity. The laws in this respect were extremely strict. Every boy and girl was sent to the university, where they studied until their twentieth or thirtieth year; there the least impurity was punished almost cruelly. This idea of personal purity has imprinted itself deeply into the very heart of the race, amounting almost to a mania. The most conspicuous example of it is to be found in the capture of Chito [Chitor] by the Mohammedans. The men defended the town against tremendous odds; and when the women saw that defeat was inevitable they lit a monstrous fire on the market place, and when the enemy broke down the gates 74,500 women jumped on the huge funeral pile and perished in the flames. This noble example has been handed down in India to the present time, when every letter bears the words '74,500,' which means that any one who unlawfully reads the letter, thereby becomes guilty of a crime similar to the one which drove those noble women of Chito to their death._x000d_ "The next period is that of the monks; it came with the advent of Buddhism, which taught that only the monks could reach the 'nirvana', something similar to the Christian heaven. The result was that all India became one huge monastery; there was but one object, one battle--to remain pure. All the blame was cast onto women, and even the proverbs warned against them. 'What is the gate to hell?' was one of them, to which the answer was: 'Woman'. Another read: 'What is the chain which binds us all to dust? Woman'. Another one: 'Who is the blindest of the blind? He who is deceived by woman.' "The same idea is to be found in the cloisters of the West. The development of all monasticism always meant the degeneration of women._x000d_ "But eventually another idea of womanhood arose. In the West it found its ideal in the wife, in India in the mother. But do not think that the priests were altogether responsible for this change. I know they always lay claim to everything in the world and I say this, although I am myself a priest. I'll bend my knees to every prophet in every religion and clime, but candor compels me to say, that here in the West the development of women was brought about by men like John Stuart Mill and the revolutionary French philosophers. Religion has done something, no doubt, but not all. Why, in Asia Minor, Christian bishops to this day keep a harem!_x000d_ "The Christian ideal is that which is found in the Anglo-Saxon race. The Mohammedan woman differs vastly from her western sisters in so far as her social and intellectual development is not so pronounced. But do not, on that account, think that the Mohammedan woman is unhappy, because it is not so. In India woman has enjoyed property rights since thousands of years. Here a man may disinherit his wife, in India the whole estate of the deceased husband must go to the wife, personal property absolutely, real property for life._x000d_ "In India the mother is the centre of the family and our highest ideal. She is to us the representative of God, as God is the mother of the Universe. It was a female sage who first found the unity of God, and laid down this doctrine in one of the first hymns of the Vedas. Our God is both personal and absolute, the absolute is male, the personal, female. And thus it comes that we now say: 'The first manifestation of God is the hand that rocks the cradle.' He is of the 'arian' race, who is born through prayer, and he is a nonarian, who is born through sensuality. "The doctrine of prenatal influence is now slowly being recognized, and science as well as religion calls out: 'Keep yourself holy, and pure.' So deeply has this been recognized in India, that there we even speak of adultery in marriage, except when marriage is consummated in prayer. And I and every good Hindoo believe, that my mother was pure and holy, and hence I owe her everything that I am. That is the secret of the race--chastity."

The Swami has arrived here on Friday [January 18]. He is in good health and happy. Last night (Sunday) he held the first of his series of lectures before the Ethical Society at Brooklyn. In spite of the strike on account of which all traffic has stopped, the house was crowded. His lecture on "Ideals of Womanhood" was a success. He was at his beat. He is urged from all sides to give parlor lectures.

144 Madison Ave New York, Jan'y 23d 95_x000d_ Dear Madam,_x000d_ I received your kind note with express notice, for which many thanks._x000d_ That I am ready to comply with your wishes va sans dire. You are the Swami's friend, and this is sufficient reason for me to do anything in my power to please you. So if there is anything I can do for you, know that my services are always at your command._x000d_ I mailed to you two newspaper reports of the Swami's Brooklyn lectures. . . . He gains daily more friends. I am sure that his sojourn in New York will not only add to his glory, but also leave a permanent impress on all those who are favored to hear him._x000d_ Miss Thursby and Miss Farmer are arranging parlour lectures for New York._x000d_ It will interest you to learn that I have rented two rooms, one for me and the other to serve as the Swami's headquarters, which we are going to occupy from Sunday next [January 27]. The Swami will board and sleep at the Guernseys, and only use new engaged room as his business office and to hold group meetings in Yoga. It would therefore be advisable to address your letters to the new place, 54 West 33d Street, where I shall be con¬stantly present to receive them, and to answer all the inquiries concerning the Swami._x000d_ Don't you think that this was a good idea?_x000d_ The Swami is in good health and happy, and in speaking of you and your family he has only words of love and blessings '

528, 5th Ave., New York_x000d_ 24th Jan., 1895_x000d_ Dear Miss Bell {Isabelle McKindley},_x000d_ I hope you are well. . . ._x000d_ My last lecture was not very much appreciated by the men but awfully so by vemen. You know this Brooklyn is the centre of anti-women's rights movements; and when I told them that women deserve and are fit for everything, they did not like it of course. Never mind, the women were in ecstasies._x000d_ I have got again a little cold. I am going to the Guernseys. I have got a room downtown also where I will go several hours to hold my classes etc. Mother Church must be all right by this time, and you are all enjoying this nice weather. Give Mrs. Adams mountain high love and regard from me when you see her next._x000d_ Send my letters as usual to the Guernseys._x000d_ With love for all,_x000d_ Ever your aff. Bro.,_x000d_ Vivekananda

The parlor lectures that Swamiji gave in the early part of this season must have greatly helped to increase the attendance at his classes, for they served to introduce him to new people, and those who heard him speak once almost invariably wanted to hear him again and yet again. Not all of these parlor lectures had been arranged by his New York friends; some took place in Brooklyn.

On January 26 Leon Landsberg wrote to Isabelle McKindley:_x000d_ Yesterday the Swami held the first of a series of parlor lectures at Mrs. [Charles] Auel's residence in Brooklyn. The lecture was attended by about sixty five persons, most of them ladies. The Swami gave an outline of the Upanishads and the Yoga systems, and his conversation was highly appreciated. His next conversation will be on Tuesday next [January 29].

It might be noted here parenthetically that while Swamiji was surely happy, he was not altogether in good health. In a letter to Isabelle McKindley, written three days after the above, Landsberg admitted that Swamiji had been suffering from a series of colds, and Swamiji himself wrote to Isabelle on January 24, "I have got again a little cold. Traveling back and forth on the Brooklyn Bridge cable car in the bitterness of a New York January did not perhaps make matters any better._x000d_ But a cold was no deterrent to Swamiji's plans. Everything had at last been arranged, and on Sunday January 27, he established his headquarters in the rooms that Landsberg had rented at 54 West Thirty-third Street and there started his classes on Vedanta and Yoga, beginning the second phase of his Western work, into which he was to pour heart, mind, and soul.

In the last days of January 1895, Swami Vivekananda established himself in lodgings at 54 West 33rd Street in the city of New York. It was a poor and unfashionable neighbourhood, but he was tired and disgusted with the fame he had acquired, and he felt that the interest he had awakened was not what he wanted; to his mind it was too superficial. He desired earnest-minded followers whom he could teach freely, while living in a place of his own. Thus he announced that he would hold classes free of charge in his own quarters. Many came, some from curiosity, others in earnest sincerity, "to learn the ancient teachings of India and the all-embracing character of its philosophy ... and, above all, to hear the constant lessons of the Swami on world-wide universal toleration".

Swamiji opened his classes most probably on Monday, January 28.* At first, for one day at least, his friends seemed to have been correct in their judgment: only a few people came. Among them was Miss Sarah Ellen Waldo, who had first heard him lecture at the Brooklyn Ethical Association (of which she was a member) and who was to become one of his closest American disciples. Of those first classes she wrote in her reminiscences:_x000d_ * According to the reminiscences of Sarah Ellen Waldo, Swamiji's New York classes began in February of 1895. (Reminisces of Swami Vivekananda by His Eastern and Western Admirers, first edition [hereafter Ram.], page 128]. But according to the reminiscences of Josephine MacLeod, she first attended Swamiji's New York class on January 29 (Rem., Page 235)• One is inclined to take Miss MacLeod's word for it. Forty-six years later she wrote to her niece Frances, "The one vivid event in my life was meeting Swamiji January 29, 1895 " This was her "spiritual birthday," as she called it, the mat important day in her life, and she would not be apt to forget or mistake its date. Nor is it likely that Swamiji wasted any time in opening his classes, He moved into the rooms at 54 West Thirty-third Street on Sunday, January 27; it would have been natural for him to start classes the following day.

The Swami was living very simply in New York, and his earliest classes were held in the small room he occupied, and in the beginning were attended by only three or four persons.

But that was only the beginning. Word quickly spread, and in no time the "right sort," in every sense of the term, were crowding into Swamiji's small room.

[The classes] grew with astonishing rapidity [Miss Waldo continued], and as the little room filled to overflowing, [it] became very picturesque. The Swami himself always Sat on the floor, and most of his audience likewise. The marble-topped dresser, the arms of the sofa, and even the corner washstand helped to furnish seats for the constantly increasing numbers. The door was left open, and the overflow filled the hall and sat on the stairs. And those first classes! How intensely interesting they were! Who that was privileged to attend them can ever forget them? The Swami so dignified yet so simple, so gravely earnest, so eloquent, and the close ranks of students, forgetting all inconveniences, hanging breathless on his every word! It was a fit beginning for a movement that has since grown to such grand proportions. In this unpretentious way did Swami Vivekananda inaugurate the work of teaching Vedanta philosophy in New York.

To Swamiji’s early classes also came Josephine MacLeod, who, like Miss Waldo, though in her own unique and spirited way, was to become one of his most devoted friends and helpers. She, too, became, it can be said, his disciple, for while she often emphasized in later years that she was his friend, not his disciple, in her own reminiscences she speaks of some early spiritual instruction she received from him and of an experience she had as a result of following it; one also knows that he gave her a mantra.* To receive instruction and a mantra from Swamiji was surely more than enough to make one his disciple. But however that may be, Miss MacLeod’s memories of her first meeting with him and of his early classes are contained in her reminiscences. First, the following excerpt from the notebooks of her reminiscences. First, the following excerpt from the notebooks of her friend the late Mme Paul Verdier will serve as a sort of prologue._x000d_ _x000d_ * In connection with Miss MacLeod's initiation; the following conversation took place at Belur Math in March of 1917 between Swami Abhayanandaji (Revered Bharat Maharaj), a senior monk of the Ramakrishna Order, who had known Miss MacLeod, and two devotees:_x000d_ First devotee: Miss McAllen often said, “I am not Swamiji’s disciple; I am his friend.’ Wasn’t she his disciple?_x000d_ Swami Abhayanandaji: She was his disciple; I know it very well. But she looked upon him as more than her guru—as her own self._x000d_ Second devotee: Didn’t Swamiji give her a mantra in a dream?_x000d_ Swami Abhayanandaji: Swamiji himself gave her a mantra. I heard from her that Swamiji had given her something, and a little later she came to him and said, “Swamiji, I can’t do this.” And he said, “All right; don’t worry.” Then many years later when she was staying at Belur Math that mantra began to well up within her without any effort on her part. Every day she would meditate in the early morning, and it would come automatically. This she told me.

Immediately after a conversation with Miss MacLeod in 1947, Mme Verdier jotted down the following:_x000d_ Tantine [as Miss MacLeod was universally known in later years] was living with her [elder] sister [Besse or Betty Sturges] at Dobbs Ferry on the Hudson…. Her sister [a widow] had two children, a boy [Hollister] and Alberta. She was friendly with Mrs. Dora Roethlesberger, who was very spiritual and also very psychic. . . . Around the 25th of January, 1895, Tantine received a letter from Mrs. Roethlesberger while in Dobbs Ferry, asking her and her sister to come down to New York and to hear and see a wonderful man from India. They both came down and on January 29 the three of them went to 54. W. 33rd Street, where Tantine saw Swamiji for the first time.

The class held on Tuesday, January 29, was probably Swamiji's second, and if the memories of both Miss Waldo and Miss MacLeod were accurate in regard to the number of people present, then there was already a considerable increase in attendance. Miss MacLeod wrote:

On the twenty-ninth of January 1895, I went with my sister to 54 West 33rd Street, New York, and heard the Swami Vivekananda in his sitting room where were as¬sembled fifteen or twenty ladies and two or three gentlemen. The room was crowded. All the arm chain were taken; so I sat on the floor in the front row. Swami stood in the corner. He said something, the particular words of which I do not remember, but instantly to me that was truth, and the second sentence he spoke was truth, and the third sentence was truth. And I listened to him for seven years and whatever he uttered was to me truth. From that moment life had a different import. It was as if he made you realize that you were in eternity. It never altered. It never grew. It was like the sun that you will never forget once you have seen. . . .

…His power Jay, perhaps, in the courage he gave others. He did not ever seem to be conscious of himself at all. It was the other man who interested him. "When the book of life begins to open, then the fun begins," he would say. He used to make us realize there was nothing secular in life; it was all holy. "Always remember, you are incidentally an American, and a woman, but always a child of God. Tell yourself day and night who you are. Never forget it." That is what he used to tell us. His presence, you see, was dynamic. You cannot pass that power on unless you have it, just as you cannot give money away unless you have it. You may imagine it, but you cannot do _x000d_ it.

As for Mrs. Bull, who had probably received the first full throated roar of the “heart-struck lion’s rage,” she did not leave New York without seeing Swamiji again after their “long fight.” From a small item in the social columns of the New York Herald one learns that on Wednesday, January 30, a Mrs. A. B. Weaver gave a luncheon in her honor, at which Swamiji and Miss Thursby were among the guests.40 It is true that a social function does not imply peace, but Swamiji’s benign presence could have brought about nothing else. He had said what he had had to say, and that was all. Moreover, if Mrs. Bull still felt dismay when she returned the following day to Cambridge, such dismay would have sprung only from the abundance of her good will and concern.

This article first appeared anonymously in the February 1895 issue of the New York Medical Times, a prestigious monthly medical journal founded and edited by Dr. Egbert Guernsey._x000d_ _x000d_ Classification or grouping of phenomena by their similari¬ties is the first step in scientific knowledge__perhaps it is all. An organized grouping, revealing to us a similarity running through the whole group, and a conviction that under similar circumstances the group will arrange itself in the same form__stretched over all time, past, present and future__is what we call law._x000d_ This finding of unity in variety is really what we call knowledge. These different groups of similars are stowed away in the pigeon holes of the mind, and when a new fact comes be¬fore us we begin to search for a similar group already existing in one of the pigeon holes of the mind. If we succeed in finding one ready made, we take the newcomer in immediately. If not, we either reject the new fact, or wait till we find more of his kind, and form a new place for the group._x000d_ Facts which are extraordinary thus disturb us; but and when we find many like them, they cease to disturb, even when our knowledge about their cause remains the same as before._x000d_ The ordinary experiences of our lives are no less wonderful than any miracles recorded in any sacred book of the world; nor are we any more enlightened as to the cause of these ordinary experiences than of the so called miracles. But the miraculous is "extraordinary", and the everyday experience is "ordinary". The "extraordinary" startles the mind, the "ordinary" satisfies._x000d_ The field of knowledge is so varied, and the more the dif¬ference is from the centre, the more widely the radii diverge._x000d_ _x000d_ At the start the different sciences were thought to have no connection whatever with each other; but as more and more knowledge comes in__that is, the more and more we come nearer the centre__the radii are converging more and more, and it seems that they are on the eve of finding a common centre. Will they ever find it?_x000d_ The study of the mind was, above all, the science to which the sages of India and Greece had directed their attention. All religions are the outcome of the study of the inner man. Here we find the attempt at finding the unity, and in the science of reli¬gion, as taking its stand upon general and massive propositions, we find the boldest and the most vigorous manifestation of this tendency at finding the unity._x000d_ Some religions could not solve the problem beyond the finding of a duality of causes, one good, the other evil. Others went as far as finding an intelligent personal cause, a few went still further beyond intellect, beyond personality, and found an infinite being._x000d_ In those, and only those systems which dared to transcend beyond the personality of a limited human consciousness, we find also an attempt to resolve all physical phenomena into unity._x000d_ The result was the "Akâsha" of the Hindus and the "Ether" of the Greeks._x000d_ This "Akasha" was, after the mind, the first material mani¬festation, said the Hindu sages, and out of this "Akasha" all this has been evolved._x000d_ History repeats itself; and again during the latter part of the nineteenth century, the same theory is coming with more vigour and fuller light._x000d_ It is being proved more clearly than ever that as there is a co relation of physical forces there is also a co relation of differ¬ent [branches of] knowledge, and that behind all these general groups there is a unity of knowledge._x000d_ It was shown by Newton that if light consisted of material particles projected from luminous bodies, they must move faster in solids and liquids than in air, in order that the laws of refrac¬tion might be satisfied._x000d_ Huyghens, on the other hand, showed that to account for the same laws on the supposition that light consisted in the un¬dulating motion of an elastic medium, it must move more slowly in solids and fluids than in gases. Fizeau and Foucault found Huyghens's predictions correct._x000d_ Light, then, consists in the vibrating motion of a medium, which must, of course, fill all space. This is called the ether._x000d_ In the fact that the theory of a cosmic ether explains fully all the phenomena of radiation, refraction, diffraction and polariza¬tion of light is the strongest argument in favour of the theory._x000d_ Of late, gravitation, molecular action, magnetic, electric, and electro dynamic attractions and repulsions have thus been explained._x000d_ Sensible and latent heat, electricity and magnetism them¬selves have been of late almost satisfactorily explained by the theory of the all pervading ether._x000d_ Zöllner, however, basing his calculations upon the data supplied by the researches of Wilhelm Weber, thinks that the transmission of life force between the heavenly bodies is ef¬fected both ways, by the undulation of a medium and by the actual evidence of particles._x000d_ _x000d_ Weber found that the molecules, the smallest particles of bodies, were composed of yet smaller particles, which he called the electric particles, and which in the molecules are in a con-stant circular motion. These electric particles are partly positive, partly negative._x000d_ Those of the same electricity repulse those of different electricity; attracting each other, each molecule contains the same amount of electric particles, with a small surplus of either positive or negative quickly changing the balance._x000d_ Upon this Zöllner builds these propositions:_x000d_ (1) The molecules are composed of a very great number of particles__the so called electric particles, which are in constant circular motion around each other within the molecule._x000d_ (2) If the inner motion of a molecule increases over a cer¬tain limit, then electric particles are emitted. They then travel from one heavenly body through space until they reach another heavenly body, where they are either reflected or absorbed by other molecules._x000d_ (3) The electric particles thus traversing space are the ether of the physicist._x000d_ (4) These ether particles have a twofold motion: first, their proper motion; second, an undulatory motion, for which they receive the impulse from the ether particles rotating in the molecules._x000d_ (5) The motion of the smallest particles corresponds to that of the heavenly bodies._x000d_ The corollary is:_x000d_ The law of attraction which holds good for the heavenly bodies also holds good for the smallest particles._x000d_ Under these suppositions, that which we call space is really filled with electric particles, or ether._x000d_ Zöllner also found the following interesting calculation for the electric atoms:_x000d_ Velocity: 50,143 geographical miles per second._x000d_ Amount of ether particles in a water molecule: 42,000 mil¬lion._x000d_ Distance from each other: 0.0032 millimeter._x000d_ _x000d_ So far as it goes, then, the theory of a universal cosmic ether is the best at hand to explain the various phenomena of nature._x000d_ As far as it goes, the theory that this ether consists of parti¬cles, electric or otherwise, is also very valuable. But on all sup¬positions, there must be space between two particles of ether, however small; and what fills this inter ethereal space? If particles still finer, we require still more fine ethereal particles to fill up the vacuum between every two of them, and so on._x000d_ Thus the theory of ether, or material particles in space, though accounting for the phenomena in space, cannot account for space itself._x000d_ And thus we are forced to find that the ether which compre¬hends the molecules explains the molecular phenomena, but it¬self cannot explain space because we cannot but think of ether as in space. And, therefore, if there is anything which will explain this space, it must be something that comprehends in its infinite being the infinite space itself. And what is there that can com¬prehend even the infinite space but the Infinite Mind?

The above report of Swamiji's answer to the question regarding widows was, as Dr. Janes later pointed out, imperfect and incomplete. While denying that all widows were ill-treated, he had admitted that some cases of ill-treatment might exist; these, however, were sporadic and exceptional. He repudiated positively and without qualification the statement that ill¬treatment of widows was an accepted and traditional part of Hindu custom, restating, as has been seen in the Standard Union report, the pertinent inheritance laws. Swamiji further declared himself in full sympathy with movements for the education of Hindu widows.

Miss Thursby's reference to Swamiji's having spoken "only in the spirit of his Master" and having "a lovely spirit" about him "now," implies that there were times when Swamiji had had something different from "a lovely spirit." And indeed to Miss Thursby and Mrs. Bull, as well as to others brought up in a tradition that associated holiness with meekness and mildness, this might have seemed to be the case. Swamiji was at times as puzzling to Christians as was Christ himself: The previous year, during his lecture tours, and possibly also during his stay in Cambridge in December, he had not hesitated to speak forthrightly When forthright speech was called for. He spoke out not only against bigotry and hypocrisy, but against the superficiality and worldliness of those who professed to be religious. In bringing his Master's message of univer¬sality to the whole world, he had had to be a warrior and a hero, intensely active, fearlessly outspoken, indomitable. At times his spirit was a fire that scorched, as well as a light that awakened. "He seems to be walking with an unsheathed sword in his hand, Sri Ramakrishna had once proudly said of his youthful and beloved disciple, and an unsheathed sword was essential to a world teacher--he whose mission was to destroy all that was false and limiting as well as to give power and direction to the true spirit of mankind. It was essential also for one whose related task was to set India's record straight in the Western mind. "I am the one man who dared to defend his country," he would write to Leasing in May of 1895, "and I have given them what they never expected from a Hindu-giving them tit-for-tat, with a compound interest.

At the beginning of 1895, however, Swamiji's days of hard ¬won battle against the forces of bigotry in America were' winding to a close. The opposition had, by and large, retreated; he was entering now into a new and essentially unchallenged phase of his mission, quietly teaching those who came to him and who hail no quarrel with him. But however loving and compassionate he was, however serene, it would never be his way to be politic. "Success" as the world conceives it was his for the asking; yet he scorned it. "Now, my children," he was to write to his Madras disciples in May of this year, "I could have made a grand success in the way of organizing here, if I were a worldly hypocrite.He refused to comply with the conventions and Prejudices of society; nor would he compromise his message in the slightest or blunt the keen edge of his teaching for the sake of harmonious relations with the more bigoted members of the established clergy. Although he never sought a confrontation with his adversaries, he stood his ground when he found himself challenged in face-to-face argument, thereby confounding and angering his opponent. Naturally enough, those who loved him remonstrated with him, seeking to advise and warn him. It was much like advising the lion to accommodate himself to the ways of sheep, and at the very outset of his first season in New York two such admonitions drew forth from him a resounding roar of independence.

The above was addressed to Mary Hale, in reply to a letter of rebuke in which she seems to have taken all the privileges of a sister, and more, one thinks, than would become a younger sister. A fragment of what appears to be this particular letter of hers reads:*_x000d_ _x000d_ * This message of dismay and reproach was included in the first edition of Swami Vivekananda in America: New Discoveries (page 558) and, on further thought, was dropped by the author from the second edition. The (cont.) reason for its omission was that the date assigned to it in an early typed copy (the earliest copy available) was not consistent with two facts mentioned within the last part of the letter itself-facts that pertained not to 1895 but, rather, to the end of 1899 or the beginning of 1900. Its date (February 26, 1895) thus became highly uncertain. Since this was the case, it seemed to me better to withhold the letter, pending further investigation or, at least, further thought. Unfortunately, the original is not available and, very possibly, no longer extant; thus investigation has been somewhat frustrated. There is, however, certain evidence in the copy that the first and last parts of the letter are not continuous, a large portion having been excised from the original. It is possible, therefore, that we have here not one letter but fragments of two, brought together through one of those accidents that can so easily occur in the handling of correspondence--preserving two letters in the same envelope, and so on. With this in mind, one can, I think, suppose that the first part of the letter is more or less correctly dated (and indeed it seems to pertain to the moods and events of early 1895 and, as far as I can imagine, to no other period), and that the second part forms the close of an entirely different letter (dated, I would guess, January, 1900). _x000d_ _x000d_ But the difficulty does not end here. The specific date, February 26, 1895, is not plausible in connection with even the first part of the letter. By February 26 Mary Hale and Swamiji were, to the obvious enjoyment of both, deep into a rhyming correspondence; as for Mrs. Hale, in mid-February Swamiji was writing cheerful and amiable letters to her, telling her of his life and work in New York and saying nothing that could bring forth a shocked rebuke. Because of the unlikelihood of its present date, I have ventured to guess that somewhere along the line the early copy has been misdated and that it was actually written in late January of 1895. I believe, moreover, that it was written by Mary Hale, not Mrs. Hale. Swamiji’s letter of February I, 1895, to Mary seems clearly to be a reply to a criticism from her, which he by no means accepted. Their ensuing rhymed correspondence seems also to refer directly to Mary’s “scolding letter,” which she deplored. It is on the basis of these various speculations that I have restored to this chapter of the book what I believe to be Mary Hale’s sisterly and ill-advised reproof. Future researches may prove that I have wrongly dated, assigned, and placed the letter, but for the time being it seems to fit admirably into this niche.

My dear Swami_x000d_ _x000d_ I did not intend answering your first letter. I thought best to let the matter drop & have no more words on the subject but now that the second one has come, beginning with the same story, full of the same spirit, not of love, but of hate of revilings, of bitterness & of rancor, I cannot but express myself: I confess dear Brother, to a feeling of terrible disappointment--a year ago such a letter from your pen would have been an utter impossibility. I am glad to have that time to look back upon! Where is the great & glorious soul that came to the Parliament of Religions, so full of love of God, that his face shone with Divine light, whose words were fire, whose very presence created an atmosphere harmony & purity, thereby drawing all souls to himself? It is our turn to cry "My!!!" Where now is your illustration of the light in the lamp? The force of the Lord reflected in all his creation?

“One sees him in his New York retreat,” reads the Life, “in the morning or the evening quiet, or at dead of night, meditating. Oftentimes he was lost in meditation, his unconsciousness of the external betraying his complete absorption within. Even while holding a class he would plunge into profound contemplation. “When the Swami emerged from such states,” the Life relates, “he would feel impatient with himself, for he desired that the Teacher should be uppermost in him, rather than the Yogi. In order to avoid repetitions of such occurrences, he instructed one or two how to bring him back by uttering a word or a Name, should he be carried by the force of meditation into Samadhi.

One can well imagine that to attend Swamiji's classes was no simple matter. To come suddenly from a cluttered, urban life and from noisy, winter-dreary streets into the rarefied atmosphere of his room, which literally vibrated with spirituality; to be day after day in the presence of a radiant prophet and to have one's mind suddenly lifted and expanded to where it might behold a realm never dreamed of before, was an experience that could be overwhelming. But it was Swamiji's greatness as a teacher to guide his students in such a way that their bodies and minds became fit vessels to receive the almost terrible gift of his liberating power.

Those who came to argue or to scoff, those who came out of curiosity, those who came to learn some psychic trick or mysterious lore remained to sit at his feet and to drink the pure water of spirituality that he gave to one and all without stint. "Some Theosophists came to my classes in New York," he was to write the following August to Mr. E. T. Sturdy, "but as soon as human beings perceive the glory of the Vedanta; all abracadabras fall off of themselves. This has been my uniform experience. And some who came with open and ready minds were made at once aware of their own infinitude and forthwith were transformed. "I think that is what happened to me 41 years ago, January 29, when I saw and heard Swamiji," Miss MacLeod wrote to a friend when she was an old woman. "Somehow one was lifted above the body and time and space.

As far as can be determined, Swamiji at first held classes every morning from eleven till one o'clock and often till later; as he wrote to Mrs. Hale on February 18, "I talk [to] them until they [grow] tired."47 Later this schedule was changed to the mornings and evenings of Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday. No program of these classes has been discovered, but from various hints here and there, we can be almost certain that he taught the four yogas -jnana, bhakti, karma, and raja. He may have held a class on the Gita as well, and, as Miss Waldo wrote, "there were `question' classes to help those to whom the teaching was so new and strange that they were desirous to have an opportunity for more extended explana¬tion.

It has been thought that no notes of Swamiji's first season of classes in New York have come down to us. There is a good possibility, however, that most of the nine sections of "Discourses on Jnana-Yoga," as published in volume eight of the Complete Works, were taken down in longhand by Miss Ellen Waldo at 54 West Thirty-third Street in the early part of 1895.* If this was indeed the case (and let us assume here that it was), then we have an excellent record of at least some of Swamiji's early jnana yoga classes. And what classes they were!_x000d_ _x000d_ * “Discourses on Jnana-Yoga” as published in volume eight of the Complete Works is accompanied by an editor’s note that reads “These were originally recorded by . . . Miss S. E. Waldo. Swami Saradananda, while he was in America (1896), copied them out from her notebook.” There is no specific indication of when or where Swamiji gave these “Discourses,” but since they were recorded by Miss Waldo, we can safely assume that they were give in either spring (cont) of 1895 or early 1896._x000d_ _x000d_ At one time I made a guess that the "Discourses" were the jnana yoga classes that Swamiji held during his second New York season (1895/96)• (See Prabuddha Bharata, April 1963, Page 150•) Further research and thought, both on my part and on the part of others, has made it clear that this could hardly be so: All the jnana yoga classes--both beginners' and advanced—of the second season are now almost certainly accounted for (see chapters five and six of this book), and there is no place in this accounting for the.”Discourses." It would seem clear, then, that Swamiji held them in the spring of 1895, and it. Highly probable that he held them in New York, rather than in Brooklyn, where he was also holding classes during this period._x000d_ _x000d_ The "Discourses" appear to represent seven jnana yoga classes, with notes from Swamiji's classes at Thousand Island Park added on at the end. The switch from the jnana yoga class notes to the Thousand Island class notes occurs in the next-to-last paragraph of section seven of the “Discourses” with the words “Let us then be brave and sincere . . . “ (Complete Works, 8:27). At this point the Thousand Island Park notes begin and continue with variations to the end. The passages adopted from the notes are from the Thousand Island Park classes of June 23, 25, 26, 27, 29, 30, and July 3 and 5 (Complete Works, 7:6-22, passim). The afternoon talk of July 29 is also drawn upon for a sentence or two. Students of Swami Vivekananda’s teachings may have discovered other passages in the “Discourses” from the Thousand Island Park notes as given in Inspired Talks. Those mentioned above; however, will indicate the extent of the borrowing.

It is small wonder that those who attended them hung "breathless on his every word" and felt that they "were in eternity." If one took Swamiji's statements as revelations of fact, not as beautiful ideas, but as actual facts applicable to oneself here and now, if one listened not with one's mind only, but with one's inner being (and who could not so listen to Swamiji, for it was to the inner being that he spoke?), then from that moment forward life would indeed have had a "different import" His teachings, spoken with the penetrating authority of a prophet, turned the accustomed universe upside down and inside out, and one's life with it. Nor were there any philosophical arguments here or scholarly dissertations; there was simply, as Miss MacLeod said, truth and again truth.

The highest good is the realization of the Self. It is beyond sense, beyond thought. The real "I" cannot be grasped. It is the eternal subject and can never become the object of knowledge, because knowledge is only of the related, not of the Absolute. All sense-knowledge is limitation, it is an endless chain of cause and effect. This world is a relative world, a shadow of the real; still, being the plane of equipoise where happiness and misery are about evenly balanced, it is the only plane where man can realise his true Self and know that he is Brahman.

This world is "the evolution of nature and the manifestation of God." It is our interpretation of Brahman or the Absolute, seen through the veil of Maya or appearance. The world is not zero, it has a certain reality; it only appears because Brahman is.

When the delusion of this world is once broken, it will come back to us, but no longer will it hold any reality for us. We shall know it as a mirage. To reach behind the mirage is the aim of all religion.

To separate ourselves utterly from matter and all belief in its reality is true Jnana. . . . Abstract unity is the foundation of Jnana-Yoga. This is called Advaitism ("without dualism or dvaitism"). This is the corner stone of the Vedanta philosophy, the Alpha and the Omega. "Brahman alone is true, all else is false, and I am Brahman."

The essence of Vedanta is that there is but one Being and that every soul is that Being in full, not a part of that Being. All the sun is reflected in each dew-drop. Appearing in time, space, and causality, this being is man, as we know him, but behind all appearance is the one Reality. Unselfishness is the denial of the lower or apparent self. We have to free ourselves from this miser-able dream that we are that bodies. We must know the truth, "I am He." We are not drops to fall into the ocean and be lost; each one is the whole, infinite ocean, and will know it when released from the fetters of illusion. Infinity cannot be divided, the "One without a second" can have no second, all is that One. The knowledge will come to all, but we should struggle to attain it now, because until we have it, we cannot really give mankind the beat help. The Jivanmukta ("the living free" or' one who knows) alone is able to give real love, real charity, real …Our real nature is all bliss, and all the pleasure we know is but a reflection, an atom, of the bliss we get from touching our real nature.

When everything has been thrown away until what cannot be thrown away is reached, that is the Self… Ask not for healing, or longevity, or prosperity, ask only to be free.

"Comfort" is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being "comfortable". of one intends to really find truth, one must not cling to comfort It is hard to let all go, but the Jnani must do it. He must become pure, kill out all desires and cease to identify himself with the body. Then and then only, the higher truth can shine in his soul. Sacrifice is necessary, and this immolation of the lower self is the underlying truth that has made sacrifice a part of all religions…

…Time and apace exist only in us, we are the one Permanent Being.

If a thing happens once, it can happen again. If any human being has ever realized perfection, we too can do so. If we cannot become perfect here and now, we never can in any state or heaven or condition we may imagine.

Do not pity anyone. Look upon all as your equal; cleanse yourself of the primal sin of inequality…. Equality is the sign of the free…Only sinners see sin. See not man, see only the Lord… Realize "I am Existence Absolute, knowledge Absolute, Bliss Absolute--I am He, I am He". Be glad at birth, be glad at death, and rejoice always in the love of God.

The Vedas . . . assert in the plainest terms that man can and does transcend this sense-bound, frozen universe. He can, as it were, find a hole in the ice through which he can pass and reach the whole ocean of life. Only by so transcending the world of sense, can he reach his true Self and realize what he truly is.

Time is but the method of our thinking, but we are the eternally present tense. . . . The secret of Jnana is to give up all and be sufficient unto ourselves.

…There is only one Individual, and each of us is That. Oneness alone is love and fearlessness; separation leads us to hatred and fear.

If the "Discourses on Jnana Yoga" are in fact notes of Swamiji's classes held in the winter and spring of 1895, then they are among the first substantial records we have of his classes in the West.* And we find that here, as in all his subsequent teachings, the key word was realization. He did not preach moral sermons; he did not exhort man to be good; rather, he showed him how to raise the level of his consciousness to the point where his actual perception of himself and of his world was not of matter, limited and gross, but of spirit, for only at that high level of perception could moral action, untainted by self interest, be spontaneous, consistent, and fraught with the power for good. Even the struggle to attain to that level, even the persistent undertaking of spiritual disciplines, could not but lessen, to at least some degree, the agony of the world. "The heart must be pure," he said in his jnana yoga class, "and the pure heart sees only good, never evil. We should never try to be guardians of mankind, or to stand on a pedestal as saints reforming sinners. Let us rather purify ourselves, and the result must be that in so doing we shall help others. Though he does not seem to have yet used the term, his mission now and always was "man-making." "It is the patient up-building of character; ' he would write to a friend in regard to his New York work, "the intense struggle to realize the truth which alone will tell in the future of humanity. So this year [1895] I am hoping to work along this line ¬practically training into the Advaita realisation a small band of men and women._x000d_ _x000d_ * The small book Six Lessons on Raja Yoga, first printed in Sap Francisco in 1913 and subsequently published by the Udbodhan Office in Calcutta , as well as in volume eight of the complete works, may be notes taken during Swamiji’s classes of December 1894 in Cambridge Massachusetts (see Prophetic Mission-2, chapter twelve , section four).If this is the case ,Six lessons constitutes to date the first known set of notes of Swamiji’s classes in the western world.

As the weeks went on, more and more people poured into Swamiji'a classes,' and, as Miss Waldo noted, "Long before [June], they had outgrown their small beginnings and had removed downstairs to occupy an entire parlour floor and extension." But though the classes were crowded, the collections or contributions were sometimes not large enough to pay expenses. "The Swami gave his services Free as sir," Miss Waldo continued:

The rent was paid by voluntary subscriptions and when these were found insufficient the Swami hired a hall and gave secular lectures on India and devoted the proceeds to the maintenance of the classes. He said that Hindu teachers of religion felt it to be their duty to support their classes and the students, too, if they were unable to care for themselves, and the teachers would willingly make any sacrifice they possibly could to assist a needy disciple.

How many "secular" lectures Swamiji gave in a hired hall in New York is not known at present. We do, however, learn from a letter written to Mrs. Bull on Sunday, March 24, by Elizabeth L. Hamlen (of whom more later) that he was to give a lecture that evening on India. "I am to take the tickets at the door; ' she wrote, not specifying what door, "while Prof Landsberg and Mr. Friedeberg [a friend of Landsberg's] seat People. And from the published memoirs of' Sister Devamata (Laura Glenn in l895)* we learn of two lectures on Vedanta and Yoga that Swamiji delivered in a small hall. Sister Devamata was vague as to dates, but it seems almost certain that the following pertains to the early months of 1895. She wrote:_x000d_ One day, as I was walking up Madison Avenue, I saw in the window of the Hall of the Universal Brotherhood a modest sign saying: "Next Sunday at 3 p.m. Swami Vivekananda will speak here on `What is Vedanta?' and the following Sunday on `What a Yoga?' " I reached the hall twenty minutes before the hour. It was already over half full. It was not large, however-a long, narrow room with a single aisle and benches reaching from it to the wall; a low platform holding reading desk and chair at the far end; and a flight of stairs at the back. The hall was on the second story and these stairs gave the only way of access to it-audience and speaker both had to make use of them. By the time three o'clock had arrived, hall, stairs, window-sills and railings, all were crowded to their utmost capacity. Many even were standing below, hoping to catch a faint echo of the words spoken in the hall above._x000d_ A sudden hush, a quiet step on the stain and Swami Vivekananda passed in stately erectness up the aisle to the platform. He began to speak; and memory, time, place, people, all melted away Nothing was left but a voice ringing through the void. It was as if a gate had swung open and I had passed out on a road leading to limitless attainment. The end of it was not visible; but the promise of what it would be shone through the thought and flashed through the personality of the one who gave it. He stood there-prophet of infinitude._x000d_ _x000d_ * Laura Glenn attended Swamiji’s classes in New York City in 1895 and 1896, but did not become his disciple or draw close to him. A few years later she took an active part in the work he had left behind in America and became a friend of Miss Waldo’s. Later still, she became a follower of Swami Paramananda and took monastic initiation from him in 1909. It was then that she became Sister Devamata.

The silence of an empty hall recalled me to myself. Everyone was gone except the Swami and two others standing near the platform. I learned later that they were Mr and Mrs. Goodyear, ardent disciples of the Swami. Mr. Goodyear made the announcements at the meetings.

Miss Laura Glenn, who in later years was to be known as Sister Devamata, recalled in her article "Memories of India and Indians" her first hearing of Swami Vivekananda. The time was probably the spring of 1895.

The public lectures were not of much financial help. "I am faring well," Swami wrote to Mrs. Hale three weeks after opening his classes. "Financially I am making the ends meet and nothing more because I do not charge anything for the classes I have in my rooms. And the [proceeds from the] public lectures have to go through so many hands.

But to make ends meet was enough, for Swamiji had re¬linquished for the time being any attempt to raise money for his Indian work and was satisfied, indeed overjoyed, to have nothing for himself. Supporting his classes at Thirty-Third Street through his own labor, he lived as he wanted and taught on his own terms. He refused at this point to accept money even from Mrs. Bull, whom he held in high esteem. He refused as gently as possible, but he repeated in effect the cry of freedom that had resounded throughout his letter to Mary Hale two weeks earlier: " `Live alone, Walk alone.' . . . Oh, great sages! you were right. One cannot serve the God of Truth who leans on somebody." Now, on February 14, he wrote to Mrs. Bull:

Accept my heartfelt gratitude for your motherly advice. I hope I will be able to carry out them in life.

How can I express my gratitude to you for what you have already done for me and my work, and my eternal gratitude to you for your offering to do something more this year? But I sincerely believe that you ought to turn all your help to Miss Farmer's Greenacre work this year. India can wait as she is waiting centuries and an immediate work at hand should always have the preference.

Again, according to Manu, collecting funds even for a good work is not good for a Sannyasin, and I have begun to feel that the old sages were right. "Hope is the greatest misery, despair is the greatest happiness." It appears like a hallucination. I am getting out of them. I was in these childish ideas of doing this and doing that…_x000d_ Perhaps these road desires were necessary to bring me over to this country. And I thank the Lord for the experiences.

In this mood Swamiji let things happen as they would, which is, in fact, what he had always done. He accepted invitations to speak outside his lodgings as they came, neither courting them, nor avoiding them. In the same letter of February 14 to Mrs. Bull he wrote, "I went to see Miss Corbin the other day, and Miss Farmer and Miss Thursby were also there. We had a nice half-hour and she wants me to hold some classes in her home from next Sunday. I am no more seeking for these things. If they come, the Lord be blessed, if not, blessed more be He.

Meanwhile, Swamiji had given other outside talks. There had been, for instance, the lecture course at the large house of Mr. And Mrs. Amzi Lorenzo Barber on Fifth Avenue at Sixty-eighth Street, which was sponsored by Mrs. Bull and which consisted of five lectures—two by Swamiji, two by Mrs. Florence Adams, and one by Mrs. Ernest Fenollosa, the well-known connoisseur and curator of Oriental art. Except for lending her spacious and, it was said, handsome drawing rooms for this series, Mrs. Barber seems to have had little to do with it. To judge from the following invitational announcement, it had been Miss Farmer and Miss Thursby who (in consultation with Mrs. Bull) had organized the series, and Mrs. Bull who presided over it:

Three weeks spent at Greenacre, Eliot, Maine, during August, 1894, suggested to Mrs. Ole Bull of Cambridge, Mass., the benefit of lectures given in December at Cambridge under her auspices led her to consent to preside over a similar course in New York._x000d_ _x000d_ Trough the courtesy of Mr. And Mrs. A. L. Barber, these lectures will be given at their residence, 871 Fifth Avenue._x000d_ _x000d_ On receipt of an acceptance and five dollars (addressed to Miss Farmer, in care of Miss Emma Thursby, 34 Gramercy Park), a ticket of admission will be forwarded to those desiring to attend this course. A prompt response is requested, that the waiting list may be supplied.

In connection with these lectures, classes and private lessons on the following subjects will be given. Those desiring to attend can arrange hours and terms with Miss Farmer. _x000d_ Classes may begin February 18_x000d_ _x000d_ Mrs. Milward Adams: The Study of Expression._x000d_ Miss Emma Thursby: Musical Expression and Phrasing._x000d_ The Swami Vivekananda: The Vedanta Philosophy._x000d_ _x000d_ PROGRAM._x000d_ February 23, 8 p.m.— Mrs. Milward Adams of Chicago._x000d_ Orderly Thought and Personal Culture._x000d_ _x000d_ February 28, 3 p. m.—Mrs. Milward Adams of Chicago._x000d_ The conversational Voice and its Possibilities._x000d_ _x000d_ March 7, 8 p. m.—The Swami Vivekananda of India._x000d_ The Vedanta Philosophy: God._x000d_ _x000d_ March 9, 8 p.m.—Mr. Ernest F. Fenollosa of the Art_x000d_ Museum, Boston._x000d_ Art as Related to Religion._x000d_ _x000d_ Music: Miss Emma Thursby and Other Artists._x000d_ 871 Fifth Avenue.

According to a report in the social columns of a New York newspaper, Mrs. Ole Bull, “a delicate, sweet-voiced woman with a tender, dreamy face and masses of dark hair,” introduced Mrs. Milward Adams to the audience. One can infer that she introduced Mr. Renollosa and Swamiji as well, but this, together with the above announcement and program (which was repeated in part in the society news), is all we know at present about Swamiji’s two ‘Barber House” lectures, for which he received, almost two months after giving the second one, a check for $ 100 from Miss Farmer. As for the related classes and private lessons mentioned in the announcement, we have no further information about them.

In addition to his classes, the Swami, as has been seen, sometimes gave public lectures in New York. At first, these were given, as he wrote to Mrs. Bull, in large downstairs rooms of the lodging house. In February and March, he lectured twice on "The Vedanta Philosophy" at the home of a Mrs. A. L. Barber at 871 Fifth Avenue. These two lectures, (to which the Swami referred in a letter as "the Barbar House lectures") constituted parts of a heterogeneous lecture series given under the auspices of Mrs. Ole Bull and were more or less private and invitational.

The Complete Works title "Soul, God, and Religion" does in fact more accurately describe the substance of this lecture than did its original title, its main theme being the unity of the essential principles of religious thought throughout the ages and in all parts of the world.

The harmony of religions was a subject Swamiji spoke on again and again during his first visit in America; it was not only one of the primary elements of his Master's message, but was a subject thc vital importance of which had been repeatedly borne in on him during his tours in 1895 and 1894 of Midwestern America, when he had come up against the extremes of religious narrowness and bigotry-attitudes which he of course knew to be rooted in ignorance and potentially dangerous to the entire world. The new age that mankind was entering would call for a universal understanding of the harmony, if not the unity, of the ideals and aspirations most Fundamental to the human race, those which concerned man's essential nature, his God, his ultimate purpose, and his destiny-those, in short, that constituted his religion. Without a recognition that the basic principles of these most deeply felt of human ideals were common to all mankind, that only the nonessentials differed-and should differ-there could be no harmony among peoples and nations in any field of human life. "My master used to say that these names as, Hindu, Christian, etc., stand as great bars to all brotherly feelings between man and man," Swamiji wrote to Mrs. Bull in March of 1899. "We must try to break them down first. They have lost all their good powers and now only stand as baneful influences under whose black magic even the best of us behave like demons. Well, we will have to work hard and must suc¬ceed. That is why I desire so much to have a center. Organization has its faults, no doubt, but without that nothing can be done.

In the last chapter of the volume preceding this one, we discussed Swamiji's developing attempt to define for the Western world the essential principles underlying the rich variety of religious expressions and forms that had evolved throughout world history. It had not been enough, he seemed to feel, to say that each religion was a way to God and should be respected, even accepted, as such by the followers of other religions. In addition to this, he sought to give meaningful expression to a deeper interpretation of his Master's message and to formulate a coherent body of principles that could be shown to underlie all religious paths and that could be called Religion, with a capital R. As far as we can judge from the sources available to us primarily newspaper accounts of his lectures in 1893 and 1894 it was not until the latter part of 1894. that he spoke in America of the dualistic, qualified monistic, and monistic views of God as ascending stages of experience and understanding, together embracing the entire spectrum of religious aspiration.

In his Hartford lecture Swamiji pursued this line of thought, pointing out concepts common to all living religions of the world. "We find that all religions teach the eternity of the soul," he said, "as well as that its luster has been dimmed, and that its primitive purity is to be regained by the knowledge of God. And as for God, he traced the evolution of man's concept of God from that of early tribal deities through that of the monotheistic, extra cosmic God, to that of God immanent in nature, and, finally, to the realization that man is God Himself, that "all that is real in me is He; all that is real in Him is I. Behind all religious struggles was the universal human need to reach that goal. "The end of all religions is the realizing of God in the soul. That is the one universal religion. If there is one universal truth in all religions, I place it here-in realizing God. Ideals and methods may differ, but that is the central point. . . . There is that beyond all books, beyond all creeds, beyond the vanities of this world, and it is the realization of God within yourself._x000d_ _x000d_ As time went on Swamiji was to define and explore in detail every aspect, theoretical and practical, of this universal religion. Indeed, to formulate the essential principles of Religion into a comprehensive teaching that would meet all the needs of heart, reason, and will and that would accommodate all ideals was the very crux of his world mission.

Many streams entered the current of Swamiji's message, which was as rich and broad as the age it was meant for, and It is unfortunate that we know but little of his teachings in the early part of 1895. But although only a few of his any talks were taken down, he wrote three articles during this season, each of which reveals a different aspect of his thought. These writings, which were not connected one with the other, pertained—successively, as it happened—to (I) the cosmos, (2) the individual soul or jiva, and (3) the Atman, all of which subjects he was to expand, develop, and combine in great detail the following year. The first article has not heretofore been known.

As the reader may recall, in his letter of February 2 to Mrs. Bull, Landsberg wrote, “The Swami has written an interesting article on Ether for Dr. Gurnsey’s medical Journal.” Dr. Guernsey’s medical journal was the New York Medical Times, a prestigious monthly, of which Guernsey was fonder and editor-in-chief. Whether or not Swamiji chose the subject of this article, it was one in which he was no doubt much interested, dealing as it did with science the ruling faith and dogma of the day. His article, which appeared anonymously in the February 1895 issue of the Medical Times, was, as far as is known, his first (and by no means his last) attempt to point out the similarities between Western science and Eastern thought and, further, to point ahead to the meeting, if not merger, of physics with metaphysics, which he knew must eventually take place. Some details of the scientific theories that Swamiji cited in his article have, it is true, since been modified by more recent findings; indeed the concept of the “ether” itself, which was then still a matter of controversy among scientists, was finally discarded in the early part of the present century and is still (1893) in unanimous disrepute. As for the electron, in 1895 its existence, though hypothesized, had not yet been verified. Thus, while the most technical part of the article Swamiji’s summary of the calculations of Johann Zollner, to the effect that the ether consists of “electric particles” must have been of much interest to readers of the Medical Times, perhaps its primary interest today lies in its indication that Swamiji had a detailed knowledge and grasp of these matter far beyond that of most laymen. Because of its value in this respect his succinct exposition of Zollner’s theories has been retained here in its entirety, but because the reader may like to skim over it, it has been set in smaller type. These paragraphs are, in any event, not necessary today to Swamiji's conclusions, which are, one ventures to think, as valid and important now as when he drew them and, ether, far more in tune with present-day scientific thought than with that of the nineteenth century.

THE ETHER._x000d_ Classification or grouping of phenomena by their simi¬larities is the first step in scientific knowledge-perhaps it is all. An organized grouping, revealing to us similarity running through the whole group, and conviction that under similar circumstances the group will arrange itself in the same form-stretched over all time, past, present and future-is what we call law.

This finding of unity in variety is really what we call knowledge. These different groups of similar are stowed away in the pigeon holes of the mind, and when a new fact comes before us we begin to search for a similar group already existing in one of the pigeon holes of the mind. If we succeed in finding one ready made we take the newcomer in immediately. If not, we either reject the new fact, or wait till we find more of his kind, and form a new place for the group.

Facts which are extraordinary thus disturb us, and when we find many like them, they cause to disturb, even when our knowledge about their cause remains the same as before.

The ordinary experiences of our lives are no less wonderful than any miracles recorded in any sacred book of the world; nor are we any more enlightened as to the cause of these ordinary experiences than of the so-called miracles. But the miraculous is “extraordinary,” and the every day experience is “ordinary.” The “extraordinary” startles the mind, the “ordinary” satisfies.

The field of knowledge is so varied, and [the] more the difference is from the center, the radii diverge the more widely.

At the start the different sciences were thought to have no connection whatever with each other, but as more and more knowledge comes in, that is, the more and more we come near the center, the radii are converging more and more, and it seems that they are on the eve of finding a common center. Will they ever find it?

The study of the mind was above all the science to which the sages of India and Greece had directed their attention. All religions are the outcome of the study of the inner man. Here we find the attempt at finding the unity, and in the science of religion, as taking its stand upon general and massive propositions, we find the boldest and the most vigorous manifestation of this tendency at finding the unity.

Some religions could not solve the problem any more than the finding [of] a duality of causes, one good, and the other evil. Others went as far as finding an intelligent personal cause, a few went still further beyond intellect, beyond personality, and found an infinite being.

In those, and only those systems which dared to transcend beyond the personality of a limited human consciousness, we find also an attempt to resolve all physical phenomena to unity._x000d_ The result was the “Akasa” of the Hindus and the “Ether” of the Greeks.

This “Akasa” was, after the mind, the first material manifestation, said the Hindu sages, and out of this “Akasa” all this has been evolved.

History repeats itself, and again during the latter part of the nineteenth century the same theory is coming, with more vigor and fuller light.

It is being proved more clearly than ever that as there is a co-relation of physical forces there is also a co-relation of different [branches of] knowledge, and that behind all these general groups there is a unity of knowledge.

It was shown by Newton that if light consisted of material particles projected from luminous bodies, they must move faster in solids and liquids than in air, in order that the laws of refraction might be satisfied.

Huygens, on the other hand, showed that to account for the same laws on the supposition that light consisted in the undulating motion of an elastic medium, it must move more slowly in solids and fluids than in gases. Fizeau and Foucault found Huygens' predictions correct.

Light, then, consist in the vibrating motion of a medium, which must, of course, fill all space. This is called the ether.

In the fact that the theory of cosmic ether explains fully all the phenomena of radiation, refraction, diffraction and polarization of light, is the strongest argument in favor of the theory.

Of late, gravitation, molecular action, magnetic, electric, and electro-dynamic attractions and repulsions have thus been explained.

Sensible and latent heat, electricity and magnetism themselves, have been of late almost satisfactorily explained by the theory of the all pervading ether.

Zollner [Johann K. F. Zollner, 1834-82], however, basing his calculations upon the data supplied by the researches of Wilhelm Weber, thinks that the transmission of life force between the heavenly bodies is effected both ways, by the undulation of a medium and by the actual evidence of particle.

Weber found that the molecules, the smallest particles of bodies, were composed of yet smaller particles, which he called the electric particles, and which in the molecules are in a constant circular motion.

These electric particles are partly positive, partly negative.

Those of the same electricity repulsing those of different electricity, attracting each other, each molecule containing the same amount of electric particles, with a small surplus of either positive or negative quickly changing the balance._x000d_ Upon this Zollner builds these propositions:

(1) The molecules are composed of a very great number of particles, the so-called electric particles, which are in constant circular motion around each other within the molecule._x000d_ (2) If the inner motion of a molecule increases over a certain limit, then electric particles are emitted. They then travel from one heavenly body through space until they reach another heavenly body, where they are either reflected or absorbed by other molecules._x000d_ (3) The electric particles thus traversing space are the ether of the physicist._x000d_ (4) These ether particles have a two-fold motion: first, their proper motion; second, an undulatory motion, for which they receive the impulse from the ether particles rotating in the molecules._x000d_ The motion of the smallest particles corresponds to that of the heavenly bodie

The corollary is:_x000d_ That the law of attraction which holds good for the heavenly bodies also holds good for the smallest particles._x000d_ Under these suppositions, that which we call space is really filled with electric particles, or ether. Zollner also found the following interesting calculation for the electric atoms: _x000d_ Velocity,50, 143 geographical miles per second._x000d_ Amount of ether particles in a water molecule - 42,000 millions._x000d_ Distance from each other, 0.0032 millimeter.

So far as it goes, then, the theory of universal cosmic ether is the best at hand to explain the various phenomena of nature.

As far as it goes, the theory that this ether consists of particles, electric or otherwise, is also very valuable. But on all suppositions, there must be space between two particles of ether, however small, and what fills this interethereal space? If particles still finer, we require still more fine ethereal particles to fill up the vacuum between every two of them, and so on.

Thus the theory of ether, or material particles in space,_x000d_ Though accounting for the phenomena in space, cannot account for space itself.

And thus we are forced to find that the ether which com¬prehends the molecules explains the molecular phenomena, but itself cannot explain space, because we cannot but think of ether as in space. And therefore, if there is anything which will explain this space, it must be something that comprehends in its infinite being the infinite space itself. And what is there that can comprehend even the infinite space but the Infinite Mind?

To convince Western readers, Swamiji quoted from Fichte, Schopenhauer, and, "nihilistic though he was," David Hume, all of whom, though Christian background, endorsed the theory of reincarnation.

Nor was the matter of reincarnation merely one of academic dispute; an important issue was at stake. In concluding his essay, Swamiji succinctly set it forth:

So far as explaining the tendencies of' the present life by past conscious efforts goes, the reincarnationists of India and the latest school of evolutionists are at one; the only difference is that the Hindus, as spiritualists, explain it by the conscious efforts of individual souls, and the materialistic school of evolutionists, by a hereditary physical transmission. The schools which hold to the theory of creation out of nothing are entirely out of court. . . .

It is thus that the doctrine of reincarnation assumes an infinite importance to our mind, for the fight between reincarnation and mere cellular transmission is, in reality, the fight between spiritualism and materialism. If cellular transmission is the all-sufficient explanation, materialism is inevitable, and there is no necessity for the theory of a soul. If it is not a sufficient explanation, the theory of an individual soul bringing into this life the experiences of the past is as absolutely true. There is no escape from the alternative, reincarnation or materialism. Which shall we accept ?

(To accept the theory of reincarnation did not, of course, mean to deny the hereditary transmission of certain tendencies. In his lecture in Brooklyn on December 30, Swamiji had explained this point. He is reported as having said: "We cannot deny that bodies inherit certain tendencies, but those ten-dencies only mean the physical configuration through which a peculiar mind alone can act in a peculiar way. . . . A soul with a certain tendency will take birth in a body which is the fittest instrument for the display of that tendency, by the laws of affinity.

It is small wonder that Swamiji began to avoid all dinner invitations. A dinner party in the 1890s was a formidable affair, particularly at ultrafashionable places like the Waldorf Hotel and Delmonico's restaurant (then on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Twenty-Sixth Street). The menus at either place would have been elaborate, rich, and endless. But even if the food had been moderately simple, Swamiji, sannyasin that he was, would have much preferred home-cooked lentils and rice to dining out; moreover, he enjoyed the company of his disciple, at least at first.

Bean soup and barley rice, cooked in his poor quarters was, by choice, the Swami's general diet. "I am very happy now," he had written to Mrs. Bull a few days earlier. "Between Mr. Landsberg [later Swami Kripananda] and me, we cook some rice and lentils or barley and quietly cat it, and write something or read or receive visits from poor people who want to learn something, and thus I feel I am more a sannyasin now than I ever was in America."

To judge from Swamiji's letters written in February and March, his life with Landsberg had started out harmoniously, and one can think of few greater blessings than to have been in Landsberg's shoes. But was the blessing too great? Perhaps in the spiritually rarefied and vibrant atmosphere that Swamiji created around himself, no one other than his own brother disciples could easily live at close quarters with him week after week. In any event, Landaberg's nerves appear to have grown more taut than usual. "May I suggest," Mrs. Bull wrote to him around April I t, "that if you will not permit yourself to expect prejudice, you will meet all in a gentler mood yourself? Sometimes you seem very forbidding & dictatorial--a spirit you do not cherish. Your nervousness is physical & from physical causes, and if you will not permit yourself to think others are opposed to you because of race or religion, you will carry with you the calm love of God and man that the Swami has taught us all. When your face radiates this you have a dignity and sweetness and help all. And you will know that he never means to wound. You spoke to me of words that had hurt you, but is it not the least of our duty to remember only the gentleness and generosity of his great heart that beats with love and gives itself in service to God and man as we know?

All in all, it seems clear that Swamiji had done his best to admonish his disciple, but it is not likely that he told him, except perhaps as a last resort, that certain members of the class disliked him. Nor, of course, was it true that he "threw the whole work overboard." Swamiji does; however, seem to have been seeking to resolve the unpleasant situation at Thirty¬ third Street. One solution to this problem (and perhaps to others as well) was for him (not Landsberg) to move to different quarters. We learn a few detail of a proposed move at this time from the letters of Elizabeth L. Hamlen to Mrs. Bull. Miss Hamlen, whose name Swamiji spelled Hamlin, was helping him at Mrs. Bull's instructions and in her employ. She seems to have been a rather simple and unremarkable young lady, effusive, eager to be liked, and apt to be misunderstood in her frequent protestations of sincerity. But Miss Hamlen meant well and worked conscientiously at the task assigned to her. As far as one can make out, her primary duties were those of public-relations secretary and door keeper at Swamiji's Monday and Saturday classes. (Miss Waldo was in charge on Wednesdays.) She took down the names and addresses of all who came, seated them, kept an eye on them, wrote and mailed scores of notices when necessary (telephones were a rarity), helped Miss Waldo, and out of money given to her for the purpose by Miss. Bull, paid for the printing of tickets, the renting of chairs and stools, the purchase of "writing material, paper, postal cards and stamps." ("If it weren't for your fifty dollars," she would write to Mrs. Bull during Swamiji's absence in April, "I could not even now do what must be done to hold S.V. together here.") In addition, she persistently gave Swamiji advice in regard to the social aspect of his work, an aspect about which he cared, as we have seen earlier, less than nothing.

Miss Hamlen was herself neither wealthy nor socially promi¬nent; yet apparently she knew New York and had connec¬tions among the city's "best people." She lived modestly with her widowed and impoverished mother and made ends meet by taking whatever ladylike job offered it. At first, she accepted money from Mrs. Bull for assisting at Swamiji's classes, but later she refused. "I can not take any money to work for this spirituality," she wrote to her benefactress on the evening of April 9. "It was all right for the Lectures (the "secular" lectures?], but now I can not." In this same letter she told Mrs. Bull of Swamiji's intended move from 54 Thirty-third Street to another and far more acceptable neighborhood.

[In the late morning of April 9) I went to 33 St. and found two friends [Swamiji and Landaberg on good terms with one another?]. My opinion is that this understanding of his friend has made the Swami more practical. He wishes Prof: (Landsberg) to be his personal friend, and a member of classes, and he is glad to have Miss Waldo and me work as we think beat.

[In other words, Landaberg was no longer to function as Swamiji’s assistant. "I am so glad the Swami and Prof. Landaberg are good friends," Miss Hamlen would write to Mrs. Bull two days later, "and that Prof: L. is not to be annoyed by class arrangements which his nervous constitution can not endure."]

He [Swamiji) was lovely to me. We went to call on Dr and Mrs Moore at one o'clock and he talked beautifully, and they did. He will go there to live.

But we must find a class room west of Madison Avenue, and a little larger than the room at 33 St. Then we went to see Mrs. Guernsey and saw her and the Doctor and they approve our plan, and are glad he is to be at Dr. Moore's. Dr Moore was making bread, so he will invite the Swami to make his kind of bread.

I walked down with the Swami to 33 St. and then rode home (to 120 West Sixteenth Street). It is all right, and I am tired and glad. Tomorrow (Wednesday) Miss Waldo will be [in attendance] at the Class, and I will look for a Class room (between 40th and 50th State). . . . The Swami said he had told Prof. L. to stay in his present room and he will pay the two dollars extra. I think that is fair, as Prof. L. has done and will do a great deal for the Swami.

Mrs. Bull also wrote to Miss Hamlen, evidently explaining to her that Swamiji did not wish to be advised about the best people.

"What a child he is!" Miss Hamlen replied on Tuesday April 16, and continued:_x000d_ A wonderful teacher-inspired-and a boy combined. I said so last Tuesday [April 9] to him when he was so beautiful to me. I told him I could only explain my desire to help him in this stranger land, as coming from my care-taking of a younger brother. . . . I am trying to keep the 33 St. Class people, and have written to them all that I will notify them what day the Swami will recommence classes. He did not return today, so I feel his return is indefinite. But his rooms at 33 St. are waiting for him. . . ._x000d_ He does not understand our point of view, our "best society" and he does not trust my judgment, although he seemed to accept me for what I am both on Sunday the 7th and on Tuesday the 9th when we were together.

Before long, Miss Hamlen learned Swamiji's address and at once wrote to him, "asking him if I could send his letters to him or do anything about 33 St. for him." "And I told him," she continued in a letter to Mts. Bull, "how satisfied I am with the class work as a corner stone of a larger work in New York.

But inspired teacher though he was a prophet whose utterances were themselves scriptures, as the passage of time was amply to prove, he yet did not forsake the age-old Indian tradition in which all valid preaching is firmly laid on the foundation of the authentic Sanskrit scriptures. Thus, as he settled down in New York for a season of intensive teaching, he felt the need of books unavailable in America. Earlier, he had sent to India for the necessary volumes and expected them to arrive by mid-February of 1895. "Sister Isabelle has sent me the French books and the Calcutta pamphlets have arrived " he wrote to Mrs. Hale on February 18, "but the big Sanskrit books ought to come. I want them badly." And in the same letter: "Kindly tell baby to send me a little Sanskrit book which came from India. I forgot to bring it over."

The Swami waited impatiently; but it was not until May that almost all scriptures he needed for his classes, as well as for his own pleasure, arrived in New York._x000d_ "I have plenty of books now to read from India," he wrote to Mrs. Hale on May 16, "and I will be quite engaged this summer.... A large package of books also I expect soon—the original Upanishads; there is no duty on them."

Apart from the purely academic and psychological character of his teaching of both Jnana- and Raja-yoga, the Swami was a man who put into practice what he preached. He was a scientist and a mystic in one. As a mystic, his mind constantly concerned itself with supermundane realities. He was always solving problems of thought in relation to the vision of the soul. And here in the West, as the Teacher, he spoke as he did because he felt and had realized what his voice gave forth so eloquently; whatever he taught he said that he had himself seen. And his scientific turn of mind gave him a deep insight into the psychology and rationale of yoga exercises; he was therefore a careful analyzer of his own exercises as well as those of his disciples. His counsel was to test everything by reason.

While his more intimate disciples study were concerned with the spiritual rather than the academic side of religious study, his description of the anatomy of the nervous system and of its relation to the brain, his statements about the relation between states of mind and nervous changes drew the attention of a number of noted American physicians and physiologists, several of whom championed his theories, avowing that though his statements were bold, they contained ideas concerning the functions of the body which were worthy of careful investigation. His claim that meditation brought about the extension and development of human faculties and produced supernormal experiences, hitherto classified as miraculous phenomena, interested the foremost American psychologists, particularly Professor William James of Harvard University.

To Professor John H. Wright_x000d_ 54 W. 33 Street_x000d_ New York_x000d_ 1 February 1895_x000d_ Dear Adhyapakji,_x000d_ You must be immersed in your work now; however, taking advantage of your kindness to me, I want to bother you a little._x000d_ What was the original Greek idea of the soul, both philo¬sophical and popular? What books can I consult (Translations, of course) to get it?_x000d_ So with the Egyptians and Babylonians and Jews?_x000d_ Will you kindly name me the books? I am sure you are per¬fectly well and so are Mrs. Wright and the children._x000d_ Ever gratefully and fraternally,_x000d_ Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

54 W. 33rd Street, N.Y.,_x000d_ 1st February, 1895_x000d_ Dear Sister {Mary Hale},_x000d_ I just received your beautiful note. . . . Well, sometimes it is a good discipline to be forced to work for work's sake, even to the length of not being allowed to enjoy the fruits of one's labour. . . . I am very glad of your criticisms and am not sorry at all. The other day at Miss Thursby's I had an excited argument with a Presbyterian gentleman, who, as usual, got very hot, angry, and abusive. However, I was afterwards severely reprimanded by Mrs. Bull for this, as such things hinder my work. So, it seems, is your opinion._x000d_ I am glad you write about it just now, because I have been giving a good deal of thought to it. In the first place, I am not at all sorry for these things--perhaps that may disgust you--it may. I know full well how good it is for one's worldly prospects to be sweet. I do everything to be sweet, but when it comes to a horrible compromise with the truth within, then I stop. I do not believe in humility. I believe in Samadarshitva --same state of mind with regard to all. The duty of the ordinary man is to obey the commands of his "God", society; but the children of light never do so. This is an eternal law. One accommodates himself to surroundings and social opinion and gets all good things from society, the giver of all good to such. The other stands alone and draws society up towards him. The accommodating man finds a path of roses; the non-accommodating, one of thorns. But the worshippers of "Vox populi" go to annihilation in a moment; the children of truth live for ever._x000d_ I will compare truth to a corrosive substance of infinite power. It burns its way in wherever it falls--in soft substance at once, hard granite slowly, but it must. What is writ is writ. I am so, so sorry, Sister, that I cannot make myself sweet and accommodating to every black falsehood. But I cannot. I have suffered for it all my life. But I cannot. I have essayed and essayed. But I cannot. At last I have given it up. The Lord is great. He will not allow me to become a hypocrite. Now let what is in come out. I have not found a way that will please all, and I cannot but be what I am, true to my own self. "Youth and beauty vanish, life and wealth vanish, name and fame vanish, even the mountains crumble into dust. Friendship and love vanish. Truth alone abides." God of Truth, be Thou alone my guide! I am too old to change now into milk and honey. Allow me to remain as I am. "Without fear--without shopkeeping, caring neither for friend nor foe, do thou hold on to Truth, Sannyasin, and from this moment give up this world and the next and all that are to come--their enjoyments and their vanities. Truth, be thou alone my guide." I have no desire for wealth or name or fame or enjoyments, Sister--they are dust unto me. I wanted to help my brethren. I have not the tact to earn money, bless the Lord. What reason is there for me to conform to the vagaries of the world around me and not obey the voice of Truth within? The mind is still weak, Sister, it sometimes mechanically clutches at earthly help. But I am not afraid. Fear is the greatest sin my religion teaches._x000d_ The last fight with the Presbyterian priest and the long fight afterwards with Mrs. Bull showed me in a clear light what Manu says to the Sannyasin, "Live alone, walk alone." All friendship, all love, is only limitation. There never was a friendship, especially of women, which was not exacting. O great sages! You were right. One cannot serve the God of Truth who leans upon somebody. Be still, my soul! Be alone! And the Lord is with you. Life is nothing! Death is a delusion! All this is not, God alone is! Fear not, my soul! Be alone. Sister, the way is long, the time is short, evening is approaching. I have to go home soon. I have no time to give my manners a finish. I cannot find time to deliver my message. You are good, you are so kind, I will do anything for you; and do not be angry, I see you all are mere children._x000d_ Dream no more! Oh, dream no more, my soul! In one word, I have a message to give, I have no time to be sweet to the world, and every attempt at sweetness makes me a hypocrite. I will die a thousand deaths rather than lead a jelly-fish existence and yield to every requirement of this foolish world, no matter whether it be my own country or a foreign country. You are mistaken, utterly mistaken, if you think I have a work, as Mrs. Bull thinks; I have no work under or beyond the sun. I have a message, and I will give it after my own fashion. I will neither Hinduise my message, nor Christianise it, nor make it any "ise" in the world. I will only my-ise it, and that is all. Liberty, Mukti, is all my religion, and everything that tries to curb it, I will avoid by fight or flight. Pooh! I try to pacify the priests!! Sister, do not take this amiss. But you are babies and babies must submit to be taught. You have not yet drunk of that fountain which makes "reason unreason, mortal immortal, this world a zero, and of man a God". Come out if you can of this network of foolishness they call this world. Then I will call you indeed brave and free. If you cannot, cheer those that dare dash this false God, society, to the ground and trample on its unmitigated hypocrisy; if you cannot cheer them, pray, be silent, but do not try to drag them down again into the mire with such false nonsense as compromise and becoming nice and sweet. _x000d_ I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its books and black-guardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath, and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping. What! Measure my soul according to what the bond-slaves of the world say? --Pooh! Sister, you do not know the Sannyasin. "He stands on the heads of the Vedas!" say the Vedas, because he is free from churches and sects and religions and prophets and books and all of that ilk! Missionary or no missionary, let them howl and attack me with all they can, I take them as Bhartrihari says, "Go thou thy ways, Sannyasin! Some will say, 'Who is this mad man?' Others, 'Who is this Chandala?' Others will know thee to be a sage. Be glad at the prattle of the worldlings." But when they attack, know that, "The elephant passing through the marketplace is always beset by curs, but he cares not. He goes straight on his own way. So it is always, when a great soul appears there will be numbers to bark after him." _x000d_ I am living with Landsberg at 54 W. 33rd Street. He is a brave and noble soul, Lord bless him. Sometimes I go to the Guernseys' to sleep._x000d_ Lord bless you all ever and ever--and may He lead you quickly out of this big humbug, the world! May you never be enchanted by this old witch, the world! May Shankara help you! May Uma open the door of truth for you and take away all your delusions!_x000d_ Yours with love and blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda

The first reproving suggestion that he mend his ways probably occurred after the parlor lecture at Miss Thursby's in the last days of January. In his own words:_x000d_ _x000d_ The other day at Miss Thursby's I had an excited argument with a Presbyterian gentleman, who, as usual, got very hot, angry, and abusive. However, I was after wards severely reprimanded by Mrs. Bull for this, as such things hinder my work. So, it seems, is your opinion.

During the first week of his New York classes Swamiji gave another parlor lecture on the night of Friday, February I. It was very probably of this occasion that Miss Thursby wrote in the following letter to Mrs. Bull. Dated simply "Monday," her letter read in part:

34 Gramercy Park_x000d_ Monday [February 4(?), 1895]_x000d_ _x000d_ My dear friend_x000d_ _x000d_ We are still going at the same rate or I should have had time to write you before this. The dinner at Miss Corbin's Saturday (Friday?] night was a great success, but we were there until nearly two o'clock as she asked us to remain until all the people went, as she was alone. Vivekananda was very fine, spoke to the people who came after dinner most impressively. There was the most wrapt [sic] attention on the part of the 4oo--who seemed to feel & expressed the great delight at the change from the ordinary fashionable gathering. He has made many new and valuable friends. Miss Corbin was too happy to express. She has offered the Conservatory, which is lovely -for classes in the Upanishads. Last night's [February 3?) lecture in Brooklyn was a splendid one. He seems to have come to the realization that he must work in the spirit of his Master. I wrote him in sending a check for $ 25 [for his parlor lecture in January?]--some days ago -how much my friends had enjoyed his talk and how we all felt the uplift when he spoke to us only in the spirit of his Master. Landsberg said last night that he would never talk again in the old antagonistic spirit. They seem so earnest. L[andsberg] told Miss Farmer that they were going to give up smoking for six weeks from today. So all seems to be going well. . . . There seems a lovely spirit about Vivek now. It was so kind of you to send check for him, but I should prefer not taking it.

Miss Anna Corbin was the daughter of Austin Corbin, one of the wealthy railroad tycoons of the era, who lived, needless to say, in a mansion on Fifth Avenue. The Four Hundred, whom Miss Thursby mentioned, were the cream of New York society, but Miss Corbin's circle would have been, on the whole, of a younger generation, one in which the once rigid and impenetrable walls of New York society had broken down and new life was pouring through the breaches crowding across the boundaries. While Miss Corbin's guest list would surely have included members of the Four Hundred (itself no longer unassailable), it would' have included as well heirs and heiresses of the new-rich and a number of impoverished but titled sons of European noblemen-two groups that had a symbiotic relationship with one another and that brought to New York society enormous wealth on the one hand and bona fide blue blood on the other. "[The Corbins'] house is always choke full of swells and foreign aristocracy," Swamiji would write to Mrs. Hale. "Princes and Barons & what not from all over the world. Some of these foreigners are very bright. I am sorry your home-manufactured aristocracy is not very in¬tereting.

Swamiji did not get home until late on the night of his parlor lecture at Miss Corbin's. "The 5wami arrived this morning at 1 o'clock . . . ," Landsberg wrote in a postscript of a letter to Mrs. Bull, dated February 2. "He is delighted with the success he had. Miss Corbin intends to have classes in her house.

54 W• 33 street_x000d_ New York _x000d_ 1st Feb 95_x000d_ Dear Adhyapakji_x000d_ You must be immersed in your work now; however taking advantage of your kindness to me I want to bother you a little._x000d_ What was the original Greek idea of the soul both philosophical and popular? What books can I consult (Translations of course) to get it?_x000d_ So with the Egyptians & Babylonians & Jews ?_x000d_ Will you kindly name me the books? I am sure you are perfectly well and so is Mrs. Wright and the children._x000d_ Ever gratefully & fraternally _x000d_ Yours_x000d_ Vivekananda

54 W. 33rd Street_x000d_ New York, _x000d_ February 2d—95_x000d_ _x000d_ My dear Mrs. O. Bull._x000d_ _x000d_ Your kind note of yesterday as well as the Ulster sent by express received. Many thanks for the gift which was deeply appreciated. But even deeper I appreciate the spirit that animated you in making it. It is the spirit of love that spreads joy and happiness—even among the undeserving; for so far I have not done anything for you to de serve your solicitude for my welfare. Nor do I know how to repay your kindness, unless it be with my blessings which I give you from the innermost of my soul . . . _x000d_ …I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of Mr. A. S. Gron from Harvard who came to call on the Swami. He made upon me the impression of an energetic, high souled young man in whom the Swami’s teachings have taken deep root. Wish to God the Swami had more of such disciples! Full of vigor and enthusiasm, they are the best agents to propagate our high ideals among the coming generation. _x000d_ _x000d_ We had a number of callers in our new residence which seems to have become the Mecca not only of the devoted truth seekers, but also of all curiosity seekers who imagine the Swami can in one lesson, impart them the art to work miracles. Men are mostly children who want their toys. _x000d_ _x000d_ The Swami has written an interesting article on Ether for Dr. Gurnsey’s [Guernsey’s] medical Journal, which I shall send you next week. He is now writing a very learned essay on Reincarnation for the Metaphysical journal._x000d_ _x000d_ Miss Hamlin was kind enough to send us, a gas stove. I am sorry that the adjoining room of which we intended to make a kitchen, has been rented, and so we’ll have to do our cooking in the bedroom._x000d_ _x000d_ With kindest regards and many blessings.

In his letter of February 2 to Mrs. Bull, Landsberg also mentioned that Swamiji was "now writing a very learned essay on Reincarnation for the Metaphysical journal." Swamiji's article, which he wrote after beginning his New York classes, was a closely reasoned argument in favor of the theory of reincarnation and the soul's beginning less independence of the body. He traced through history the various views on the subject, and although he had an abundance of historical knowledge at his finger tips, the article required research.

Swami Vivekananda, being presented by Dr. Janes, the president of the Ethical Association, under whose auspices these lectures are given, said in part: "The Hindoo occupies a unique position towards Buddhism. Like Christ, who antagonized the Jews, Buddha antagonized the prevailing religion of India; but while Christ was rejected by his countrymen, Buddha was accepted as God Incarnate. He denounced the priestcraft at the very doors of their temples, yet to-day he is worshipped by them._x000d_ "Not, however, the creed which bears his name. What Buddha taught, the Hindoo believes, but what the Buddhists teach, we do not accept. For the teachings of the Great Master, spread out broadcast over the land, came back in tradition, colored by the channels through which they passed._x000d_ "In order to understand Buddhism fully we must go back to the mother religion from which it came. The books of Veda have two parts; the first, Cura makanda [Karma Kanda], contains the sacrificial portion, while the second part, the Vedanta, denounces sacrifices, teaching charity and love, but not death. Each sect took up what portion it liked. The charvaka, or materialist, basing his doctrine on the first part, believed that all was matter and that there is neither a heaven nor a hell, neither a soul nor a God. The second sect, the Gains [Jains], were very moral atheists, who, while rejecting the idea of a God, believed that there is a soul, striving for more perfect development. These two sects were called the heretics. A third sect was called orthodox, because it accepted the Vedas, although it denied the existence of a personal God, believing that everything sprang from the atom or nature._x000d_ "Thus the intellectual world was divided before Buddha came. But for a correct understanding of his religion, it is also necessary to speak of the caste then existing. The Vedas teach that he who knows God is a Brahma [Brahmin]; he who protects his fellows is a Chocta [Kshatriya], while he who gains his livelihood in trade is a Visha [Vaishya]. These different social diversions [divisions] developed or degenerated into iron-bound casts [castes], and an organized and crystallized priestcraft stood upon the neck of the nation. At this time Buddha was born, and his religion is therefore the culmination of an attempt at a religious and a social reformation._x000d_ "The air was full of the din of discussion; 20,000 blind priests were trying to lead 20,000,000 [?] blind men, fighting amongst themselves. What was more needed at that time than for a Buddha to preach? 'Stop quarreling, throw your books aside, be perfect!' Buddha never fought true castes, for they are nothing but the congregation of those of a particular natural tendency, and they are always valuable. But Buddha fought the degenerated castes with their hereditary privileges, and spoke to the Brahmins: 'True Brahmins are not greedy, nor criminal nor angry--are you such? If not, do not mimic the genuine, real men. Caste is a state, not an iron-bound class, and every one who knows and loves God is a true Brahmin.' And with regard to the sacrifices, he said: 'Where do the Vedas say that sacrifices make us pure? They may please, perhaps, the angels, but they make us no better. Hence, let off these mummeries--love God and strive to be perfect.'_x000d_ "In later years these doctrines of Buddha were forgotten. Going to lands yet unprepared for the reception of these noble truths, they came back tainted with the foibles of these nations. Thus the Nihilists arose--a sect whose doctrine it was that the whole universe, God and soul, had no basis, but that everything is continually changing. They believed in nothing but the enjoyment of the moment, which eventually resulted in the most revolting orgies. That, however, is not the doctrine of Buddha, but a horrible degeneration of it, and honor to the Hindoo nation, who stood up and drove it out._x000d_ "Every one of Buddha's teachings is founded in the Vedantas. He was one of those monks who wanted to bring out the truths, hidden in those books and in the forest monasteries. I do not believe that the world is ready for them even now; it still wants those lower religions, which teach of a personal God. Because of this, the original Buddhism could not hold the popular mind, until it took up the modifications, which were reflected back from Thibet and the Tartars. Original Buddhism was not at all nihilistic. It was but an attempt to combat caste and priestcraft; it was the first in the world to stand as champion of the dumb animals, the first to break down the caste, standing between man and man."_x000d_ Swami Vivekananda concluded his lecture with the presentation of a few pictures from the life of Buddha, the "great one, who never thought a thought and never performed a deed except for the good of others; who had the greatest intellect and heart, taking in all mankind and all the animals, all embracing, ready to give up his life for the highest angels as well as for the lowest worm." He first showed how Buddha, for the purpose of saving a herd of sheep, intended for a king's sacrifice, had thrown himself upon the altar, and thus accomplished his purpose. He next pictured how the great prophet had parted from his wife and baby at the cry of suffering mankind, and how, lastly, after his teachings had been universally accepted in India, he accepted the invitation of a despised Pariah, who dined him on swine's flesh, from the effects of which he died.

Swamiji's third public lecture in Brooklyn at the Pouch Mansion was entitled, "Buddhism as Understood in India." He delivered it on Sunday, February 3, and it was reported upon in the Brooklyn Standard Union of Monday, February 4, as Follows:

TRUE BUDDHISM_x000d_ ___________x000d_ _x000d_ An Eloquent Defense of It by Swami Vivekananda_x000d_ ___________x000d_  _x000d_ The Hindoo Monk at His Best_x000d_ ___________x000d_ Buddhism a Reformation of Ancient Society and Religion-It Combated Casts, and was the First to Preach Mercy towards Animals-Scenes from the Life of Buddha-Meeting of the Ethical Society at_x000d_ _x000d_ the Pouch Mansion.

Never before, during his stay in this city, was Swami Vivekananda more eloquent or impressive than last evening, when he spoke to a large audience, at the Pouch Mansion, on the subject: "Buddhism as Understood in India." Himself imbued with a holy enthusiasm for the ancient religion of his forefathers, the celebrated Hindoo monk held his hearers spellbound with the fascinating earnestness of his speech.

Buddha has no truer disciple than this youthful priest who, conscious of his own strength, boldly declares: "The morality of true Buddhism is the noblest yet given to the world!" His tribute to "Buddha, the Great, the Master," was touching in its grand simplicity; as it was admirable in its noble eloquence. His words last night were not those of a paid exponent of a peculiar system of philosophy, but rather those of an apostle, preaching a creed which has become a part of his very self.

AN EXPOSITION OF BUDDHISM_x000d_ _x000d_ Six hundred people assembled in the ballroom of the Pouch Gallery at No. 345 Clinton Avenue, last evening to listen to an address by Swami Vivekananda, whose able expositions of the Veda's philosophy have delighted large audiences in Brooklyn before._x000d_ As the address was to be given before the Brooklyn Ethical Association, the largest part of the audience were members of that organization.

54 W. 33rd St., New York,_x000d_ 9th February, 1895_x000d_ {original in Bengali}_x000d_ Dear Sanyal,_x000d_ . . . Paramahamsa Deva was my Guru, and whatever I may think of him in point of greatness, why should the world think like me? And if you press the point hard, you will spoil everything. The idea of worshipping the Guru as God is nowhere to be met with outside Bengal, for other people are not yet ready to take up that ideal. . . . Many would fain associate my name with themselves--"I belong to them!" But when it comes to doing something I want, they are nowhere. So selfish is the whole world!_x000d_ I shall consider myself absolved from a debt of obligation when I succeed in purchasing some land for Mother. I don't care for anything after that._x000d_ In this dire winter I have travelled across mountains and over snows at dead of night and collected a little fund; and I shall have peace of mind when a plot is secured for Mother._x000d_ Henceforth address my letters as above, which is to be my permanent seat from now. Try to send me an English translation of the Yogavasishtha Ramayana. . . . Don't forget those books I asked for before, viz Sanskrit Narada and Shandilya Sutras. _x000d_ "{Sanskrit}--Hope is the greatest of miseries, the highest bliss lies in giving up hope."_x000d_ Yours affectionately,_x000d_ Vivekananda

54 W. 33rd St., New York,_x000d_ 14th Feb., 1895_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ Accept my heartfelt gratitude for your motherly advice. I hope I will be able to carry out them in life._x000d_ How can I express my gratitude to you for what you have already done for me and my work, and my eternal gratitude to you for your offering to do something more this year. But I sincerely believe that you ought to turn all your help to Miss Farmer's Greenacre work this year. India can wait as she is waiting centuries and an immediate work at hand should always have the preference._x000d_ Again, according to Manu, collecting funds even for a good work is not good for a Sannyasin, and I have begun to feel that the old sages were right. "Hope is the greatest misery, despair is the greatest happiness." It appears like a hallucination. I am getting out of them. I was in these childish ideas of doing this and doing that._x000d_ "Give up all desire and be at peace. Have neither friends nor foes, and live alone. Thus shall we travel having neither friends nor foes, neither pleasure nor pain, neither desire nor jealousy, injuring no creatures, being the cause of injury to no creatures--from mountain to mountain, from village to village, preaching the name of the Lord."_x000d_ "Seek no help from high or low, from above or below. Desire nothing--and look upon this vanishing panorama as a witness and let it pass."_x000d_ Perhaps these mad desires were necessary to bring me over to this country. And I thank the Lord for the experience._x000d_ I am very happy now. Between Mr. Landsberg and me, we cook some rice and lentils or barley and quietly eat it, and write something or read or receive visits from poor people who want to learn something, and thus I feel I am more a Sannyasin now than I ever was in America._x000d_ "In wealth is the fear of poverty, in knowledge the fear of ignorance, in beauty the fear of age, in fame the fear of backbiters, in success the fear of jealousy, even in body is the fear of death. Everything in this earth is fraught with fear. He alone is fearless who has given up everything" (Vairagya-Shatakam , 31)._x000d_ I went to see Miss Corbin the other day, and Miss Farmer and Miss Thursby were also there. We had a nice half-hour and she wants me to hold some classes in her home from next Sunday._x000d_ I am no more seeking for these things. If they come, the Lord be blessed, if not, blessed more be He._x000d_ Again accept my eternal gratitude._x000d_ Your devoted son,_x000d_ Vivekananda

It should not be thought, however, that Swamiji did not consider the "busy fair" of Greenacre a worthwhile undertaking, deserving of encouragement and support. With characteristic magnanimity, he had written to Mrs. Bull on February 14, 1895.

“I am very happy now,” Swamiji had written to Mrs. Bull in his letter of February 14, in which he had declined with thanks her offer of help. “Between Mr. Landsberg and me, we cook some rice and lentils or barley and quietly eat it, and write something or read or receive visits from poor people who want to learn something, and thus I feel am more a Sannyasin now than I ever was in America.

Now Sister Mary,_x000d_ You need not be sorry_x000d_ For the hard raps I gave you,_x000d_ You know full well,_x000d_ Though you like me tell,_x000d_ With my whole heart I love you._x000d_ _x000d_ The babies I bet,_x000d_ The best friends I met,_x000d_ Will stand by me in weal and woe._x000d_ And so will I do,_x000d_ You know it too._x000d_ _x000d_ Life, name, or fame, even heaven forgo_x000d_ For the sweet sisters four_x000d_ Sans reproche et sans peur,_x000d_ The truest, noblest, steadfast, best. _x000d_ _x000d_ The wounded snake its hood unfurls,_x000d_ The flame stirred up doth blaze,_x000d_ The desert air resounds the calls_x000d_ Of heart-struck lion's rage._x000d_ _x000d_ The cloud puts forth its deluge strength_x000d_ When lightning cleaves its breast,_x000d_ When the soul is stirred to its inmost depth_x000d_ Great ones unfold their best._x000d_ _x000d_ Let eyes grow dim and heart grow faint,_x000d_ And friendship fail and love betray,_x000d_ Let Fate its hundred horrors send,_x000d_ And clotted darkness block the way._x000d_ _x000d_ All nature wear one angry frown,_x000d_ To crush you out--still know, my soul,_x000d_ You are Divine. March on and on,_x000d_ Nor right nor left but to the goal._x000d_ _x000d_ Nor angel I, nor man, nor brute,_x000d_ Nor body, mind, nor he or she,_x000d_ The books do stop in wonder mute_x000d_ To tell my nature; I am He._x000d_ _x000d_ Before the sun, the moon, the earth,_x000d_ Before the stars or comets free,_x000d_ Before e'en time has had its birth,_x000d_ I was, I am, and I will be._x000d_ _x000d_ The beauteous earth, the glorious sun,_x000d_ The calm sweet moon, the spangled sky,_x000d_ Causation's laws do make them run;_x000d_ They live in bonds, in bonds they die. _x000d_ _x000d_ And mind its mantle dreamy net_x000d_ Cast o'er them all and holds them fast._x000d_ In warp and woof of thought are set,_x000d_ Earth, hells, and heavens, or worst or best._x000d_ _x000d_ Know these are but the outer crust--_x000d_ All space and time, all effect, cause._x000d_ I am beyond all sense, all thoughts,_x000d_ The witness of the universe._x000d_ _x000d_ Not two or many, 'tis but one,_x000d_ And thus in me all me's I have;_x000d_ I cannot hate, I cannot shun_x000d_ Myself from me, I can but love._x000d_ _x000d_ From dreams awake, from bonds be free,_x000d_ Be not afraid. This mystery,_x000d_ My shadow, cannot frighten me,_x000d_ Know once for all that I am He._x000d_ _x000d_ Well, so far my poetry. Hope you are all right. Give my love to mother and Father Pope. I am busy to death and have almost no time to write even a line. So excuse me if later on I am rather late in writing._x000d_ Yours eternally,_x000d_ Vivekananda._x000d_ _x000d_ Miss M.B.H. sent Swami the following doggerel in reply:_x000d_ _x000d_ The monk he would a poet be_x000d_ And wooed the muse right earnestly;_x000d_ In thought and word he could well beat her,_x000d_ What bothered him though was the metre._x000d_ _x000d_ His feet were all too short too long,_x000d_ The form not suited to his song;_x000d_ He tried the sonnet, lyric, epic,_x000d_ And worked so hard, he waxed dyspeptic._x000d_ _x000d_ While the poetic mania lasted_x000d_ He e'en from vegetables fasted,_x000d_ Which Leon had with tender care_x000d_ Prepared for Swami's dainty fare._x000d_ _x000d_ One day he sat and mused alone--_x000d_ Sudden a light around him shone,_x000d_ The "still small voice" his thoughts inspire_x000d_ And his words glow like coals of fire._x000d_ _x000d_ And coals of fire they proved to be_x000d_ Heaped on the head of contrite me--_x000d_ My scolding letter I deplore_x000d_ And beg forgiveness o'er and o'er._x000d_ _x000d_ The lines you sent to your sisters four_x000d_ Be sure they'll cherish evermore_x000d_ For you have made them clearly see_x000d_ The one main truth that "all is He"._x000d_ _x000d_ Then Swami:_x000d_ _x000d_ In days of yore,_x000d_ On Ganga's shore preaching,_x000d_ A hoary priest was teaching_x000d_ How Gods they come_x000d_ As Sita Ram,_x000d_ And gentle Sita pining, weeping._x000d_ The sermons end,_x000d_ They homeward wend their way--_x000d_ The hearers musing, thinking. _x000d_ _x000d_ When from the crowd_x000d_ A voice aloud_x000d_ This question asked beseeching, seeking--_x000d_ "Sir, tell me, pray,_x000d_ Who were but they_x000d_ These Sita Ram you were teaching, speaking!"_x000d_ _x000d_ So Mary Hale,_x000d_ Allow me tell,_x000d_ You mar my doctrines wronging, baulking._x000d_ I never taught_x000d_ Such queer thought_x000d_ That all was God--unmeaning talking!_x000d_ _x000d_ But this I say,_x000d_ Remember pray,_x000d_ That God is true, all else is nothing,_x000d_ This world's a dream_x000d_ Though true it seem,_x000d_ And only truth is He the living!_x000d_ The real me is none but He,_x000d_ And never, never matter changing!_x000d_ With undying love and gratitude to you all. . . ._x000d_ Vivekananda._x000d_ _x000d_ And then Miss M.B.H.:_x000d_ _x000d_ The difference I clearly see_x000d_ 'Twixt tweedledum and tweedledee--_x000d_ That is a proposition sane,_x000d_ But truly 'tis beyond my vein_x000d_ To make your Eastern logic plain._x000d_ _x000d_ If "God is truth, all else is naught,"_x000d_ This "world a dream", delusion up wrought,_x000d_ What can exist which God is not? _x000d_ _x000d_ All those who "many" see have much to fear,_x000d_ He only lives to whom the "One" is clear._x000d_ So again I say_x000d_ In my poor way,_x000d_ I cannot see but that all's He,_x000d_ If I'm in Him and He in me._x000d_ _x000d_ Then the Swami replied:_x000d_ _x000d_ Of temper quick, a girl unique,_x000d_ A freak of nature she,_x000d_ A lady fair, no question there,_x000d_ Rare soul is Miss Mary._x000d_ Her feelings deep she cannot keep,_x000d_ But creep they out at last,_x000d_ A spirit free, I can foresee,_x000d_ Must be of fiery cast._x000d_ _x000d_ Tho' many a lay her muse can bray,_x000d_ And play piano too,_x000d_ Her heart so cool, chills as a rule_x000d_ The fool who comes to woo._x000d_ Though, Sister Mary, I hear they say_x000d_ The sway your beauty gains,_x000d_ Be cautious now and do not bow,_x000d_ However sweet, to chains._x000d_ _x000d_ For 'twill be soon, another tune_x000d_ The moon-struck mate will hear_x000d_ If his will but clash, your words will hash_x000d_ And smash his life I fear._x000d_ These lines to thee, Sister Mary,_x000d_ Free will I offer, take_x000d_ "Tit for tat"--a monkey chat,_x000d_ For monk alone can make.

Thinking he might have been too harsh, Swamiji sent her a conciliatory poem on February 15, the first verse of which read:_x000d_ _x000d_ Now Sister Mary,_x000d_ You need not be sorry_x000d_ For the hard raps I gave you,_x000d_ You know full well,_x000d_ Though you like me tell,_x000d_ With my whole heart I love you._x000d_ _x000d_ (This poem, which went on for thirteen more stanzas, included the famous lines: “The wounded snake its hood unfurls, The flame stirred up doth blaze, The desert air resounds the call / Of heart-struck lion’s rage._x000d_ _x000d_ Mary replied in verses of her own, applauding, teasing, and remorseful. The pertinent lines read:_x000d_ One day he sat and mused alone _x000d_ Sudden a light around him shone, _x000d_ The “still small voice” his thoughts inspire _x000d_ And his words glow like coals of fire._x000d_ _x000d_ And coals of fire they proved to be,_x000d_ Heaped on the head of contrite me-_x000d_ _x000d_ My scolding letter I deplore _x000d_ And beg forgiveness o’er and o’er.39

Swamiji started his classes in Miss Corbin's conservatory at 425 Fifth Avenue not on Sunday, February 17, as first planned, but on the Sunday following. "Behind [Miss Corbin's] parlor," he wrote in his letter of February 18 to Mrs. Hale, "she has a long arbour with all sorts of palms & seats & electric light. There I will have a little class next week of a score of long-pockets. The fun is not bad. Some of Swamiji's New York friends must have been highly pleased, for these "long -pockets" were indeed the "right people." But within a month he threw over the whole thing. On March 16, after four Sunday classes in the Corbin conservatory, he called on Miss Corbin "and told her," as he wrote to Mrs. Bull; "that I should not be able to come to hold classes any more." "Was it ever in the history of the world that any great work was done by the rich?" he exclaimed. "It is the heart and the brain that do it ever and ever and not the purse. My idea and all my life with it-and to God for help; to none else! This is the only secret of success. I am sure you are one with me here. In this same letter (dated March 21) he informed Mrs. Bull that he would have a series of paid Sunday lectures (to take the place of the Corbin classes?) in the downstairs rooms of his lodging house, which would seat about a hundred persons and where all were welcome; he expected these lectures to cover his expenses.

A meal of “rice and lentils or barley” was a great relief to Swamiji. In the first half of February he had attended a number of dinner parties, some of which may have been given in his honor by Miss Corbin’s “long-pocket” friends. In a letter written to Mrs. Hale on February 18, he tells a little of these unavoidable occasions and of much else besides. We have earlier quoted several passages from this long and informative letter, but since it has not been heretofore published as a whole, it is given here in full:

RAMABAI CIRCLE AROUSED _x000d_ __________x000d_ _x000d_ Statement of Lecturer Swami Vivekananda_x000d_ Denied as to Treatment of Widows_x000d_ _x000d_ The Hindoo Monk Declares that Child Wives Left by _x000d_ High Caste Hindoos are Protected by Law-The _x000d_ President of the Ramabai Circle Cites Testimony to_x000d_ Prove that They are Starved and Beaten.

A sharp issue has arisen between certain persons in this city, who are interested in Christian work in India, and Swami Vivekananda, a Hindoo monk now in Brooklyn, on the question of the suffering of child widows in India. Swami Vivekananda denied, in a lecture in the Pouch mansion a fortnight ago, that widows of high caste Hindoos undergo suffering. High caste Hindoo widows are, he said, especially protected by law. This statement is held by many persons in this city to be open to question; and especially by those who are members of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle.

Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, from whom the Brooklyn circle and about sixty others in this country are named, visited this country eight years ago, and among other large cities visited Brooklyn. She was a convert to Christianity, and is now conducting an undenominational school for girls in India. The Ramabai circles in this country contribute from $100 to $150 a year each for the support of the institution. That which caused the creation of the Ramabai circles and is the strength of their financial support to the school in India is chiefly the stirring account Ramabai gave when here, though it is declared that there is ample corroborative proof of her representations in that respect.

The president of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle is Mrs. James McKeen of 136 Henry Street. Mrs. McKeen said yesterday to the reporter of the Eagle:

"A square issue of fact seems to be presented on this question of the suffering of child widows in India. We learned From Ramabai, in her addresses here, that girls 3, 4, 5 and 6 years old were married to men of 50 or 60 years of age. If they were not married before they were 11 years old it would be a family disgrace. If the husband died without having a son born to him the widow was compelled to enter upon the most abject life. All their fine clothing and jewelry was taken from them, coarse garments were put on and they became household drudges.

I know of one instance from an American woman, who was in India at the time and was personally acquainted with the facts, that a young Hindoo girl married an old man and, a year after his death, was found sick and coarsely clad, lying on an old mat and praying for death to relieve her from her sufferings. She said to this visitor, who told me the story, 'Pray that all the child widows may die. It would be a relief from their sufferings.'

From other sources I am thoroughly convinced that Ramabai's story is correct in every detail.

As a member of the Ramabai circle in Brooklyn, during the past six years, I have many times solicited money from the public in behalf of suffering child widows in India.

It has been reported to me by many creditable gentlemen that they have lately heard it pub¬licly stated by one entitled to know of what he speaks that there does not exist in India any such class as that for which we have appealed. India is a large country, very much larger than many of us are apt to imagine who look only upon the map of it drawn to a scale of 500 miles to the inch. I have never been in any part of it, and cannot pretend to speak of its manners and customs from personal knowledge. But it seems to me that in some respects this absence of personal contact with the subject involved may fit one better for a calm survey of the testimony proffered, as a judge is supposed to be better qualified for giving an unprejudiced judgment when his personal sympathies, interests and tastes are not at all concerned in the decision. What might seem to one born and bred in India a proper and happy condition, might seem to another born and bred in a western land a condition of humiliation and misery. Without desiring, therefore, to assume any superior knowledge on this subject, or to call in question the state¬ments of any others from their own points of view¬ happiness and unhappiness being to some extent relative terms-I am willing to state the reasons that lead me still to believe that there is much suffering among the child widows of India, and a condition of degradation and misery among its women that the happier people of America are in duty bound to alleviate to the extent that may be within our power.

"It may be asked what is the credibility of my witnesses? Naturally the first witness to whom I turn is the Pundita Ramabai. Concerning her probity, consider the personal regard in which she is held by those who have known her for many years, both in this country and in England, and also look at the unsolicited testimony of her compatriots as to her truthfulness and honor.

(Here follows some favorable testimony concerning Ramabai and her work from Max Muller, a Miss Hamlin, an unidentified Madras paper and the London Atheneum. Mrs. McKeen then continues:]

"It seems to me that when a woman, such as Ramabai is here described to be, devotes her life to the work of relieving a certain class from misery it is not unreasonable to believe that such a class exists.

"The Bishop of Bombay evidently thought that such a class existed, since he sent 58 pounds to Ramabai to aid her work. Miss Manning, honorable secretary of the British National Indian association, is persuaded that such a class exists, for she has contributed 158 pounds to Ramabai for its relief, and, finally, Mrs. J. W. Adams of Boston, Mass., widely known in this city, and much beloved and honored, having been sent to India by the Ramabai association to look after its work, wrote from Poona last year these stirring words:

" `We have been told that the life of the child widow is not so hard and pitiless as represented; that the majority have happy homes and they yield cheerfully, bravely, to the restrictions, customs or religion placed upon them. Why, then, are the shaven head and the coarse white garment badges of shame? Why are the bodies emaciated and disfigured by starvation and cruel blows? Why the sullen, joyless expression of the face? Why so many suicides and lives of shame among the child widows? Let him who believes such statements, though made by the Hindoos themselves, come to the Sharada Sadana, listen to the pitiful histories of some of its inmates, see the white marks of the hot iron on the head, the little white scars made by sharp finger nails meeting the tender flesh of the face as I have heard and seen all this, and much more-and he will not only know the truth, but he will feel it a privilege to do something for these unfortunate children.'

"I think what I have said is sufficient to convince any unprejudiced person that if I have been mistaken in this matter I do not speak unadvisedly and have the honor to be mistaken in good company. I shall be glad to mail reports of the work done in India to anyone who will send me his or her address."

54 West, 33 New York_x000d_ 25th February, 1895_x000d_ Dear Sister {Isabelle McKindley}, _x000d_ I am sorry you had an attack of illness. I will give you an absent treatment though your confession takes half the strength out of my mind._x000d_ That you have rolled out of it is all right. All's well that ends well._x000d_ The books have arrived in good condition and many thanks for them._x000d_ Your ever affectionate bro.,_x000d_ Vivekananda

WIDOWS IN INDIA_x000d_ __________x000d_ _x000d_ Swami Vivekananda's Statements Denied In _x000d_ The Ramabai Circle

In his lecture delivered in the Pouch Gallery before the Brooklyn Ethical Association two weeks ago [January 20] the Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk who is en¬deavoring to enlighten Americans as to political, econ¬omic, social and religious affairs in India, denied the existence of the ill treatment of widows in that country which is alleged to exist. The Pundita Ramabai Sarasvati, a convert to Christianity who visited America eight years ago, and who is now engaged in her own country in the conduct of an undenominational school for her own sex, stated in her talks here, that if the husband of a woman dies leaving no male heir the widow is despoiled of her jewelry and good clothing and is made a household drudge. Corroborative statements have come from other sources. In denying such statements the Swami Vivek¬ananda declared that high caste widows in India are especially protected by law. His denial has created quite a stir in the Ramabai Circle of this city, which is one of many such circles founded in this country to foster the Pundita Ramaliai's work in India.

The revolt promises to be a very pretty controversy, as the Swami Vivekananda has won many friends in this city, and will undoubtedly have a respectable following, while there will be a disposition among a large number of persons interested in such questions to give both sides an impartial hearing.

The matter was referred to last night by Dr. Lewis G. Janes, president of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, at the opening of the meeting in the Pouch Gallery. He regarded the position of the Ramabai Circle as tending to bring into disrepute the Swami Vivek¬ananda's own educational work in India, and he said that the association had made careful investigation as to the monk's position and character before inviting him to come here.

As Dr. Janes said, it was true that Swamiji had not dwelt upon the condition of high-caste widows in India; he had, indeed, not mentioned the lives of widows at all. The question then is, what had aroused Mrs. McKeen's passionate and insistent declaration that Hindu widows did undergo suffering?

This question was, I believe, partially answered when it was pointed out earlier that Swamiji's statement regarding the inheritance laws of India implied that widows as a class were not persecuted victims of India's social system.

Another fact which explains the apparently unprovoked excitement of the women of the Ramabai Circle was that Swamiji's views regarding child widows were not unknown to them. The reader will remember that his first talk in America had been delivered before the Ramabai Circle in Boston in August of 1893 (chapter one). There can be little doubt that at that time he had spoken directly about the condition of Hindu widows in India and that Ramabai's followers had received a severe shock. It would not be unreasonable to believe that thenceforth all the fifty-five circles of America had been antagonistic toward him and that this antagonism has grown in proportion to his growing fame and influence.

Moreover, it is very likely that the Ramabai Circles had been influenced in their attitude toward Swamiji by the Christian missionaries. Indeed, as is evidenced by a letter which he wrote on July 1, 1895, to Alasinga, Swamiji suspected this to be the case.

The Brooklyn Circle was not, therefore, as it might have appeared to an outsider, suddenly aroused; rather it was making a last stand against an old and feared opponent.

Silence would perhaps have better served the Ramabai Circles' interest, for Swamiji made no compromise in his reply. After his fourth lecture in Brooklyn, given the day following the printing of Mrs. McKeen's interview with the press, he was directly questioned regarding Hindu widows and, in a few clear words, denied Ramabai's tales-a denial which the Circle had anticipated and which was, to them, shattering.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA LECTURES_x000d_ __________x000d_ He Tells about the Arts and Sciences of India.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk who first came into prominence in this country in connection with the world's Congress of religions at the fair in Chicago, and who has recently been delivering a series of lectures in Brooklyn, spoke last night in Historical hall under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical association.

He delivered his lecture on "India's Gift to the World" to an audience that was extremely enthusiastic and appreciative. The lecturer's subject was particularly interesting to those of antiquarian turn of mind, for he spoke of the arts and sciences which India has given to the world, of the astronomy, the medicine, the mathematics which were developed in that country. He was frequently and heartily applauded.

With him on the platform sat President Lewis G. Janes, of the Ethical association; the other officers of the association, Dr. Charles H. Shepard, James A. Skelton, Mrs. Ole Bull and a number of other ladies and gentlemen.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, delivered a lecture Monday night under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical Association before a fairly large audience at the hall of the Long Island Historical Society, corner Pierrepont and Clinton streets. His subject was "India's Gift to the World"._x000d_ He spoke of the wondrous beauties of his native land, "where stood the earliest cradle of ethics, arts, sciences, and literature, and the integrity of whose sons and the virtue of whose daughters have been sung by all travelers." Then the lecturer showed in rapid details, what India has given to the world._x000d_ "In religion," he said, "she has exerted a great influence on Christianity, as the very teachings of Christ would [could] be traced back to those of Buddha." He showed by quotations from the works of European and American scientists the many points of similarity between Buddha and Christ. The latter's birth, his seclusion from the world, the number of his apostles, and the very ethics of his teachings are the same as those of Buddha, living many hundred years before him._x000d_ "Is it mere chance," the lecturer asked, "or was Buddha's religion but the foreshadowing of that of Christ? The majority of your thinkers seem to be satisfied in the latter explanation, but there are some bold enough to say that Christianity is the direct offspring of Buddhism just as the earliest heresy in the Christian religion--the Monecian [Manichaean] heresy--is now universally regarded as the teaching of a sect of Buddhists. But there is more evidence that Christianity is founded in Buddhism. We find it in recently discovered inscriptions from the reign of Emperor Oshoka [Asoka] of India, about 300 B.C., who made treaties with all the Grecian kings, and whose missionaries discriminated [disseminated?] in those very parts, where, centuries after, Christianity flourished, the principles of the Buddhistic religion. Thus it is explained, why you have our doctrine of trinity, of incarnation of God, and of our ethics, and why the service in our temples is so much alike to that in your present Catholic churches, from the mass to the chant and benediction. Buddhism had all these long before you. Now use your own judgment on these premises--we Hindoos stand ready to be convinced that yours is the earlier religion, although we had ours some three hundred years before yours was even thought of._x000d_ "The same holds good with respect to sciences. India has given to antiquity the earliest scientifical physicians, and, according to Sir William Hunter, she has even contributed to modern medical science by the discovery of various chemicals and by teaching you how to reform misshapen ears and noses. Even more it has done in mathematics, for algebra, geometry, astronomy, and the triumph of modern science--mixed mathematics--were all invented in India, just so much as the ten numerals, the very cornerstone of all present civilization, were discovered in India, and are in reality, Sanskrit words._x000d_ "In philosophy we are even now head and shoulders above any other nation, as Schopenhauer, the great German philosopher, has confessed. In music India gave to the world her system of notation, with the seven cardinal notes and the diatonic scale, all of which we enjoyed as early as 350 B.C., while it came to Europe only in the eleventh century. In philology, our Sanskrit language is now universally acknowledged to be the foundation of all European languages, which, in fact, are nothing but jargonized Sanskrit._x000d_ "In literature, our epics and poems and dramas rank as high as those of any language; our 'Shaguntala' [Shakuntala ] was summarized by Germany's greatest poet, as 'heaven and earth united'. India has given to the world the fables of Aesop, which were copied by Aesop from an old Sanskrit book; it has given the Arabian Nights, yes, even the story of Cinderella and the Bean Stalks. In manufacture, India was the first to make cotton and purple [dye], it was proficient in all works of jewelry, and the very word 'sugar', as well as the article itself, is the product of India. Lastly she has invented the game of chess and the cards and the dice. So great, in fact, was the superiority of India in every respect, that it drew to her borders the hungry cohorts of Europe, and thereby indirectly brought about the discovery of America._x000d_ "And now, what has the world given to India in return for all that? Nothing but nullification [vilification] and curse and contempt. The world waded in her children's life-blood, it reduced India to poverty and her sons and daughters to slavery, and now it adds insult to injury by preaching to her a religion which can only thrive on the destruction of every other religion. But India is not afraid. It does not beg for mercy at the hands of any nation. Our only fault is that we cannot fight to conquer; but we trust in the eternity of truth. India's message to the world is first of all, her blessing; she is returning good for the evil which is done her, and thus she puts into execution this noble idea, which had its origin in India. Lastly, India's message is, that calm goodness, patience and gentleness will ultimately triumph. For where are the Greeks, the one-time masters of the earth? They are gone. Where are the Romans, at the tramp of whose cohorts the world trembled? Passed away. Where are the Arabs, who in fifty years had carried their banners from the Atlantic to the Pacific? And where are the Spaniards, the cruel murderers of millions of men? Both races are nearly extinct; but thanks to the morality of her children, the kinder race will never perish, and she will yet see the hour of her triumph."_x000d_ At the close of the lecture, which was warmly applauded, Swami Vivekananda answered a number of questions in regard to the customs of India. He denied positively the truth of the statement published in yesterday's [February 25] Standard Union, to the effect that widows are ill-treated in India. The law guarantees her not only her own property, before marriage, but also all she received from her husband, at whose death, if there be no direct heirs, the property goes to her. Widows seldom marry in India, because of the scarcity of men. He also stated that the self-sacrifices of wives at the death of their husbands as well as the fanatical self-destruction under the wheels of the Juggernaut, have wholly stopped, and referred his hearers for proof to Sir William Hunter's "History of the Indian Empire".

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk, lectured in Historical hall Monday night under the auspices of the Brooklyn Ethical association, on "India's Gift to the World". There were about two hundred and fifty people in the hall when the Swami stepped on the platform. Much interest was manifested on account of the denial by Mrs. James McKeen, president of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle, which is interested in Christian work in India, of the statement attributed to the lecture that the child widows of India were not protected [ill-treated]. In no part of his lecture was reference made to this denial, but after he had concluded, one of the audience asked the lecturer what explanation he had to make to the statement. Swami Vivekananda said that it was untrue that child widows were abused or ill treated in any way. He added:_x000d_ "It is a fact that some Hindus marry very young. Others marry when they have attained a fair age and some do not marry at all. My grandfather was married when quite a child. My father when he was 14 years old and I am 30 years old and am not yet married. When a husband dies all his possessions go to his widow. If a widow is poor she is the same as poor widows in any other country. Old men sometimes marry children, but if the husband was wealthy it was all the better for the widow the sooner he died. I have traveled all over India, but failed to see a case of the ill treatment mentioned. At one time there were religious fanatics, widows, who threw themselves into a fire and were consumed by the flames at the death of their husbands. The Hindus did not believe in this, but did not prevent it, and it was not until the British obtained control of India that it was finally prohibited. These women were considered saints and in many instances monuments were erected to their memory."

1895_x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ We have no organisation, nor want to build any. Each one is quite independent to teach, quite free to preach whatever he or she likes._x000d_ If you have the spirit within, you will never fail to attract others. Theosophists' method can never be ours, for the very simple reason that they are an organised sect, we are not._x000d_ Individuality is my motto. I have no ambition beyond training individuals up. I know very little; that little I teach without reserve; where I am ignorant, I confess it as such, and never am I so glad as when I find people being helped by Theosophists, Christians, Mohammedans, or anybody in the world. I am a Sannyasin; as such I consider myself as a servant, not as a master in the world. . . . If people love me, they are welcome, if they hate, they are also welcome._x000d_ Each one will have to save himself, each one to do his own work. I seek no help, I reject none. Nor have I any right in the world to be helped. Whosoever has helped me or will help, it will be their mercy to me, not my right, and as such I am eternally grateful. When I became a Sannyasin, I consciously took the step, knowing that this body would have to die of starvation. What of that, I am a beggar. My friends are poor, I love the poor, I welcome poverty. I am glad that I sometimes have to starve. I ask help of none. What is the use? Truth will preach itself, it will not die for the want of the helping hands of me! "Making happiness and misery the same, making success and failure the same, fight thou on" (Gita). It is that eternal love, unruffled equanimity under all circumstances, and perfect freedom from jealousy or animosity that will tell. That will tell, nothing else._x000d_ Yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

U.S.A._x000d_ (Summer of?) 1895_x000d_ {original in Bengali}_x000d_ My Dear--{Brother-disciples at the Math},_x000d_ The books that Sanyal sent have arrived. I forgot to mention this. Please inform him about it._x000d_ Let me write down something for you all:_x000d_ 1. Know partiality to be the chief cause of all evil. That is to say, if you show towards any one more love than towards somebody else, rest assured, you will be sowing the seeds of future troubles._x000d_ 2. If anybody comes to you to speak ill of any of his brothers, refuse to listen to him in toto . It is a great sin to listen even. In that lies the germ of future troubles._x000d_ 3. Moreover, bear with everyone's shortcomings. Forgive offences by the million. And if you love all unselfishly, all will by degrees come to love one another. As soon as they fully understand that the interests of one depend upon those of others, everyone of them will give up jealousy. To do something conjointly is not in our very national character. Therefore you must try to inaugurate that spirit with the utmost care, and wait patiently. To tell you the truth, I do not find among you any distinction of great or small: everyone has the capacity to manifest, in times of need, the highest energy. I see it. Look for instance how Shashi will remain always constant to his spot; his steadfastness is a great foundation-rock. How successfully Kali and Jogen brought about the Town Hall meeting; it was indeed a momentous task! Niranjan has done much work in Ceylon and elsewhere. How extensively has Sarada travelled and sown seeds of gigantic future works! Whenever I think of the wonderful renunciation of Hari, about his steadiness of intellect and forbearance, I get a new access of strength! In Tulasi, Gupta, Baburam, Sharat, to mention a few, in every one of you there is tremendous energy. If you still entertain any doubt as to Shri Ramakrishna's being a jewel-expert, what then is the difference between you and a madman! Behold, hundreds of men and women of this country are beginning to worship our Lord as the greatest of all Avataras! Steady! Every great work is done slowly. . . ._x000d_ He is at the helm, what fear! You are all of infinite strength--how long does it take you to keep off petty jealousy or egoistic ideas! The moment such propensity comes, resign yourselves to the Lord! Just make over your body and mind to His work, and all troubles will be at an end for ever._x000d_ There will not be room enough, I see, in the house where you are at present living. A commodious building is needed. That is to say, you need not huddle together in one room. If possible, not more than two should live in the same room. There should be a big hall, where the books may be kept._x000d_ Every morning there should be a little reading from the scriptures, which Kali and others may superintend by turns. In the evening there should be another class, with a little practice in meditation and Sankirtanas etc. You may divide the work, and set apart one day for Yoga, a day for Bhakti, another for Jnana, and so forth: It will be excellent if you fix a routine like this, so that outside people also may join in the evening classes. And every Sunday, from ten in the morning up till night, there should be a continuous succession of classes and Sankirtanas etc. That is for the public. If you take the trouble to continue this kind of routine work for some time, it will gradually make itself easy and smooth. There should be no smoking in that hall, for which another place must be set apart. If you can take trouble to bring about this state of things by degrees, I shall think a great advance is made._x000d_ What about a certain magazine that Haramohan was trying to publish? If you can manage to start one, it will indeed be nice._x000d_ Yours affectionately,_x000d_ Vivekananda

So Swamiji was now pronounced guilty of religious hatred! This barb was probably unique in all those he had received in America. But Mrs. McKeen was suffering from an unhealed wound that had been caused by the Hindu dislike of Christian proselytizing.

The "great blow" to the Sharada Sadana (Ramabai's school at Poona) to which she refers, was the resignation in a body of the Hindu Advisory Board. In the records of the Brooklyn Ramabai Circle the following letter, dated August 13, 1893, is to be found: "To Mrs. J. W. Andrews, Boston: In the last letter we wrote to you . . . it was stated . . . we were unwilling to undertake any responsibility as an Advisory Board in regard to the Sharada Sadana. We are therefore surprised to find that in the reports published by you our names are still mentioned as constituting an Advisory Board in Poona. . . . No such Advisory Board as you mention has existed for the past two or three years. If the Sadana is to be conducted as an avowed proselytizing institution, we must disavow all connection with it. We beg you will take into view this declaration and cease to mention our names as members of the Advisory Board."

(In August, 1893, blows were raining heavily upon Ramabai's friends. It was shortly after Mrs. Andrews had received the above letter that Swamiji gave his talk before the women of the Boston circle.) Mrs. Andrews of Boston hastened forthwith to Poona "to see for herself' and returned with the news that there was no proselytizing. Although, after a time, some of the members of the Advisory Board relented, suspicion remained-as well it might, Ramabai being a Christian convert. .

"Both you and I have passed through many births;_x000d_ you know them not, I know them all."_x000d_ ----Bhagavad-Gita_x000d_ _x000d_ Of the many riddles that have perplexed the intellect of man in all climes and times, the most intricate is himself. Of the myriad mysteries that have called forth his energies to struggle for solution from the very dawn of history, the most mysterious is his own nature. It is at once the most insoluble enigma and the problem of all problems. As the starting-point and the repository of all we know and feel and do, there never has been, nor will be, a time when man's own nature will cease to demand his best and foremost attention._x000d_ Though through hunger after that truth, which of all others has the most intimate connection with his very existence, though through an all-absorbing desire for an inward standard by which to measure the outward universe, though through the absolute and inherent necessity of finding a fixed point in a universe of change, man has sometimes clutched at handfuls of dust for gold, and even when urged on by a voice higher than reason or intellect, he has many times failed rightly to interpret the real meaning of the divinity within--still there never was a time since the search began, when some race, or some individuals, did not hold aloft the lamp of truth._x000d_ Taking a one-sided, cursory and prejudiced view of the surroundings and the unessential details, sometimes disgusted also with the vagueness of many schools and sects, and often, alas, driven to the opposite extreme by the violent superstitions of organised priestcraft--men have not been wanting, especially among advanced intellects, in either ancient or modern times, who not only gave up the search in despair, but declared it fruitless and useless. Philosophers might fret and sneer, and priests ply their trade even at the point of the sword, but truth comes to those alone who worship at her shrine for her sake only, without fear and without shopkeeping._x000d_ Light comes to individuals through the conscious efforts of their intellect; it comes, slowly though, to the whole race through unconscious percolations. The philosophers show the volitional struggles of great minds; history reveals the silent process of permeation through which truth is absorbed by the masses._x000d_ Of all the theories that have been held by man about himself, that of a soul entity, separate from the body and immortal, has been the most widespread; and among those that held the belief in such a soul, the majority of the thoughtful had always believed also in its pre-existence._x000d_ At present the greater portion of the human race, having organised religion, believe in it; and many of the best thinkers in the most favoured lands, though nurtured in religions avowedly hostile to every idea of the pre-existence of the soul, have endorsed it. Hinduism and Buddhism have it for their foundation; the educated classes among the ancient Egyptians believed in it; the ancient Persians arrived at it; the Greek philosophers made it the corner-stone of their philosophy; the Pharisees among the Hebrews accepted it; and the Sufis among the Mohammedans almost universally acknowledged its truth._x000d_ There must be peculiar surroundings which generate and foster certain forms of belief among nations. It required ages for the ancient races to arrive at any idea about a part, even of the body, surviving after death; it took ages more to come to any rational idea about this something which persists and lives apart from the body. It was only when the idea was reached of an entity whose connection with the body was only for a time, and only among those nations who arrived at such a conclusion, that the unavoidable question arose: Whither? Whence?_x000d_ The ancient Hebrews never disturbed their equanimity by questioning themselves about the soul. With them death ended all. Karl Heckel justly says, "Though it is true that in the Old Testament, preceding the exile, the Hebrews distinguish a life-principle, different from the body, which is sometimes called `Nephesh', or `Ruakh', or `Neshama', yet all these words correspond rather to the idea of breath than to that of spirit or soul. Also in the writings of the Palestinian Jews, after the exile, there is never made mention of an individual immortal soul, but always only of a life-breath emanating from God, which, after the body is dissolved, is reabsorbed into the Divine `Ruakh'."_x000d_ The ancient Egyptians and the Chaldeans had peculiar beliefs of their own about the soul; but their ideas about this living part after death must not be confused with those of the ancient Hindu, the Persian, the Greek, or any other Aryan race. There was, from the earliest times, a broad distinction between the Aryas and the non-Sanskrit speaking Mlechchhas in the conception of the soul. Externally it was typified by their disposal of the dead--the Mlechchhas mostly trying their best to preserve the dead bodies either by careful burial or by the more elaborate processes of mummifying, and the Aryas generally burning their dead._x000d_ Herein lies the key to a great secret--the fact that no Mlechchha race, whether Egyptian, Assyrian, or Babylonian, ever attained to the idea of the soul as a separate entity which can live independent of the body, without the help of the Aryas, especially of the Hindus._x000d_ Although Herodotus states that the Egyptians were the first to conceive the idea of the immortality of the soul, and states as a doctrine of the Egyptians "that the soul after the dissolution of the body enters again and again into a creature that comes to life; then, that the soul wanders through all the animals of the land and the sea and through all the birds, and finally after three thousand years returns to a human body," yet, modern researches into Egyptology have hitherto found no trace of metempsychosis in the popular Egyptian religion. On the other hand, the most recent researches of Maspero, A. Erman, and other eminent Egyptologists tend to confirm the supposition that the doctrine of palingenesis was not at home with the Egyptians._x000d_ With the ancient Egyptians the soul was only a double, having no individuality of its own, and never able to break its connection with the body. It persists only so long as the body lasts; and if by chance the corpse is destroyed, the departed soul must suffer a second death and annihilation. The soul after death was allowed to roam freely all over the world, but always returning at night to where the corpse was, always miserable, always hungry and thirsty, always extremely desirous to enjoy life once more, and never being able to fulfil the desire. If any part of its old body was injured, the soul was also invariably injured in its corresponding part. And this idea explains the solicitude of the ancient Egyptians to preserve their dead. At first the deserts were chosen as the burial-place, because the dryness of the air did not allow the body to perish soon, thus granting to the departed soul a long lease of existence. In course of time one of the gods discovered the process of making mummies, through which the devout hoped to preserve the dead bodies of their ancestors for almost an infinite length of time, thus securing immortality to the departed ghost, however miserable it might be._x000d_ The perpetual regret for the world, in which the soul can take no further interest, never ceased to torture the deceased. "O, my brother," exclaims the departed, "withhold not thyself from drinking and eating, from drunkenness, from love, from all enjoyment, from following thy desire by night and by day; put not sorrow within thy heart, for, what are the years of man upon earth? The West is a land of sleep and of heavy shadows, a place wherein the inhabitants, when once installed, slumber on in their mummy forms, never more waking to see their brethren; never more to recognise their fathers and mothers, with hearts forgetful of their wives and children. The living water, which earth giveth to all who dwell upon it, is for me stagnant and dead; that water floweth to all who are on earth, while for me it is but liquid putrefaction, this water that is mine. Since I came into this funeral valley I know not where nor what I am. Give me to drink of running water . . . Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face to the North, that the breeze may caress me and my heart be refreshed from its sorrow." _x000d_ Among the Chaldeans also, although they did not speculate so much as the Egyptians as to the condition of the soul after death, the soul is still a double and is bound to its sepulchre. They also could not conceive of a state without this physical body, and expected a resurrection of the corpse again to life; and though the goddess Ishtar, after great perils and adventures, procured the resurrection of her shepherd husband, Dumuzi, the son of Ea and Damkina, "The most pious votaries pleaded in vain from temple to temple, for the resurrection of their dead friends."_x000d_ Thus we find, that the ancient Egyptians or Chaldeans never could entirely dissociate the idea of the soul from the corpse of the departed or the sepulchre. The state of earthly existence was best after all; and the departed are always longing to have a chance once more to renew it; and the living are fervently hoping to help them in prolonging the existence of the miserable double and striving the best they can to help them._x000d_ This is not the soil out of which any higher knowledge of the soul could spring. In the first place it is grossly materialistic, and even then it is one of terror and agony. Frightened by the almost innumerable powers of evil, and with hopeless, agonised efforts to avoid them, the souls of the living, like their ideas of the souls of the departed--wander all over the world though they might--could never get beyond the sepulchre and the crumbling corpse._x000d_ We must turn now for the source of the higher ideas of the soul to another race, whose God was an all-merciful, all-pervading Being manifesting Himself through various bright, benign, and helpful Devas, the first of all the human race who addressed their God as Father--"Oh, take me by the hands even as a father takes his dear son"; with whom life was a hope and not a despair; whose religion was not the intermittent groans escaping from the lips of an agonised man during the intervals of a life of mad excitement; but whose ideas come to us redolent with the aroma of the field and forest; whose songs of praise--spontaneous, free, joyful, like the songs which burst forth from the throats of the birds when they hail this beautiful world illuminated by the first rays of the lord of the day--come down to us even now through the vista of eighty centuries as fresh calls from heaven; we turn to the ancient Aryas._x000d_ "Place me in that deathless, undecaying world where is the light of heaven, and everlasting lustre shines"; "Make me immortal in that realm where dwells the King Vivasvan's son, where is the secret shrine of heaven"; "Make me immortal in that realm where they move even as they list"; "In the third sphere of inmost heaven, where worlds are full of light, make me immortal in that realm of bliss"--These are the prayers of the Aryas in their oldest record, the Rig-Veda Samhita._x000d_ We find at once a whole world of difference between the Mlechchha and the Aryan ideals. To the one, this body and this world are all that are real, and all that are desirable. A little life-fluid which flies off from the body at death, to feel torture and agony at the loss of the enjoyments of the senses, can, they fondly hope, be brought back if the body is carefully preserved; and thus a corpse became more an object of care than the living man. The other found out that, that which left the body was the real man; and when separated from the body, it enjoyed a state of bliss higher than it ever enjoyed when in the body. And they hastened to annihilate the corrupted corpse by burning it._x000d_ Here we find the germ out of which a true idea of the soul could come. Here it was--where the real man was not the body, but the soul, where all ideas of an inseparable connection between the real man and the body were utterly absent--that a noble idea of the freedom of the soul could rise. And it was when the Aryas penetrated even beyond the shining cloth of the body with which the departed soul was enveloped, and found its real nature of a formless, individual, unit principle, that the question inevitably arose: Whence?_x000d_ It was in India and among the Aryas that the doctrine of the pre-existence, the immortality, and the individuality of the soul first arose. Recent researches in Egypt have failed to show any trace of the doctrines of an independent and individual soul existing before and after the earthly phase of existence. Some of the mysteries were no doubt in possession of this idea, but in those it has been traced to India._x000d_ "I am convinced", says Karl Heckel, "that the deeper we enter into the study of the Egyptian religion, the clearer it is shown that the doctrine of metem-psychosis was entirely foreign to the popular Egyptian religion; and that even that which single mysteries possessed of it was not inherent to the Osiris teachings, but derived from Hindu sources."_x000d_ Later on, we find the Alexandrian Jews imbued with the doctrine of an individual soul, and the Pharisees of the time of Jesus, as already stated, not only had faith in an individual soul, but believed in its wandering through various bodies; and thus it is easy to find how Christ was recognised as an incarnation of an older Prophet, and Jesus himself directly asserted that John the Baptist was the Prophet Elias come back again. "If ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come."--Matt. XI.14._x000d_ The ideas of a soul and of its individuality among the Hebrews, evidently came through the higher mystical teachings of the Egyptians, who in their turn derived it from India. And that it should come through Alexandria is significant, as the Buddhistic records clearly show Buddhistic missionary activity in Alexandria and Asia Minor._x000d_ Pythagoras is said to have been the first Greek who taught the doctrine of palingenesis among the Hellenes. As an Aryan race, already burning their dead and believing in the doctrine of an individual soul, it was easy for the Greeks to accept the doctrine of reincarnation through the Pythagorean teachings. According to Apuleius, Pythagoras had come to India, where he had been instructed by the Brahmins._x000d_ So far we have learnt that wherever the soul was held to be an individual, the real man, and not a vivifying part of the body only, the doctrine of its pre-existence had inevitably come, and that externally those nations that believed in the independent individuality of the soul had almost always signified it by burning the bodies of the departed. Though one of the ancient Aryan races, the Persian, developed at an early period and without any Semitic influence a peculiar method of disposing of the bodies of the dead, the very name by which they call their "Towers of silence", comes from the root Dah, to burn._x000d_ In short, the races who did not pay much attention to the analysis of their own nature, never went beyond the material body as their all in all, and even when driven by higher light to penetrate beyond, they only came to the conclusion that somehow or other, at some distant period of time, this body will become incorruptible._x000d_ On the other hand, that race which spent the best part of its energies in the inquiry into the nature of man as a thinking being--the Indo-Aryan--soon found out that beyond this body, beyond even the shining body which their forefathers longed after, is the real man, the principle, the individual who clothes himself with this body, and then throws it off when worn out. Was such a principle created? If creation means something coming out of nothing, their answer is a decisive "No". This soul is without birth and without death; it is not a compound or combination but an independent individual, and as such it cannot be created or destroyed. It is only travelling through various states._x000d_ Naturally, the question arises: Where was it all this time? The Hindu philosophers say, "It was passing through different bodies in the physical sense, or, really and metaphysically speaking, passing through different mental planes."_x000d_ Are there any proofs apart form the teachings of the Vedas upon which the doctrine of reincarnation has been founded by the Hindu philosophers? There are, and we hope to show later on that there are grounds as valid for it as for any other universally accepted doctrine. But first we will see what some of the greatest of modern European thinkers have thought about reincarnation._x000d_ I. H. Fichte, speaking about the immortality of the soul, says:_x000d_ "It is true there is one analogy in nature which might be brought forth in refutation of the continuance. It is the well-known argument that everything that has a beginning in time must also perish at some period of time; hence, that the claimed past existence of the soul necessarily implies its pre-existence. This is a fair conclusion, but instead of being an objection to, it is rather an additional argument for its continuance. Indeed, one needs only to understand the full meaning of the metaphysico-physiological axiom that in reality nothing can be created or annihilated, to recognise that the soul must have existed prior to its becoming visible in a physical body."_x000d_ Schopenhauer, in his book, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, speaking about palingenesis, says:_x000d_ "What sleep is for the individual, death is for the `will'. It would not endure to continue the same actions and sufferings throughout an eternity without true gain, if memory and individuality remained to it. It flings them off, and this is Lethe, and through this sleep of death it reappears fitted out with another intellect as a new being; a new day tempts to new shores. These constant new births, then, constitute the succession of the life-dreams of a will which in itself is indestructible, until instructed and improved by so much and such various successive knowledge in a constantly new form, it abolishes and abrogates itself. . . . It must not be neglected that even empirical grounds support a palingenesis of this kind. As a matter of fact, there does exist a connection between the birth of the newly appearing beings and the death of those that are worn out. It shows itself in the great fruitfulness of the human race which appears as a consequence of devastating diseases. When in the fourteenth century the Black Death had for the most part depopulated the Old World, a quite abnormal fruitfulness appeared among the human race, and twin-births were very frequent. The circumstance was also remarkable that none of the children born at this time obtained their full number of teeth; thus nature, exerting itself to the utmost, was niggardly in details. This is related by F. Schnurrer in his Chronik der Seuchen, 1825. Casper, also, in his Ueber die Wahrscheinliche Lebensdauer des Menschen, 1835, confirms the principle that the number of births in a given population has the most decided influence upon the length of life and mortality in it, as this always keeps pace with mortality; so that always and everywhere the deaths and the births increase and decrease in like proportion, which he places beyond doubt by an accumulation of evidence collected from many lands and their various provinces. And yet it is impossible that there can be physical, causal connection between my early death and the fruitfulness of a marriage with which I have nothing to do, or conversely. Thus here the metaphysical appears undeniable, and in a stupendous manner, as the immediate ground of explanation of the physical. Every new-born being comes fresh and blithe into the new existence, and enjoys it as a free gift; but there is and can be nothing freely given. Its fresh existence is paid for by the old age and death of a worn-out existence which has perished, but which contained the indestructible seed out of which the new existence has arisen; they are one being."_x000d_ The great English philosopher Hume, nihilistic though he was, says in the sceptical essay on immortality, "The metempsychosis is therefore the only system of this kind that philosophy can listen to." The philosopher Lessing, with a deep poetical insight, asks, "Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest, because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once? . . . Why should not I come back as often as I am capable of acquiring fresh knowledge, fresh experience? Do I bring away so much from once that there is nothing to repay the trouble of coming back?"_x000d_ The arguments for and against the doctrine of a pre-existing soul reincarnating through many lives have been many, and some of the greatest thinkers of all ages have taken up the gauntlet to defend it; and so far as we can see, if there is an individual soul, that it existed before seems inevitable. If the soul is not an individual but a combination of "Skandhas" (notions), as the Madhyamikas among the Buddhists insist, still they find pre-existence absolutely necessary to explain their position._x000d_ The argument showing the impossibility of an infinite existence beginning in time is unanswerable, though attempts have been made to ward it off by appealing to the omnipotence of God to do anything, however contrary to reason it may be. We are sorry to find this most fallacious argument proceeding from some of the most thoughtful persons._x000d_ In the first place, God being the universal and common cause of all phenomena, the question was to find the natural causes of certain phenomena in the human soul, and the Deus ex machina theory is, therefore, quite irrelevant. It amounts to nothing less than confession of ignorance. We can give that answer to every question asked in every branch of human knowledge and stop all inquiry and, therefore, knowledge altogether._x000d_ Secondly, this constant appeal to the omnipotence of God is only a word-puzzle. The cause, as cause, is and can only be known to us as sufficient for the effect, and nothing more. As such we have no more idea of an infinite effect than of an omnipotent cause. Moreover, all our ideas of God are only limited; even the idea of cause limits our idea of God. Thirdly, even taking the position for granted, we are not bound to allow any such absurd theories as "Something coming out of nothing", or "Infinity beginning in time", so long as we can give a better explanation._x000d_ A so-called great argument is made against the idea of pre-existence by asserting that the majority of mankind are not conscious of it. To prove the validity of this argument, the party who offers it must prove that the whole of the soul of man is bound up in the faculty of memory. If memory be the test of existence, then all that part of our lives which is not now in it must be non-existent, and every person who in a state of coma or otherwise loses his memory must be non-existent also._x000d_ The premises from which the inference is drawn of a previous existence, and that too on the plane of conscious action, as adduced by the Hindu philosophers, are chiefly these:_x000d_ First, how to explain this world of inequalities? Here is one child born in the province of a just and merciful God, with every circumstance conducing to his becoming a good and useful member of the human race, and perhaps at the same instant and in the same city another child is born under circumstances every one of which is against his becoming good. We see children born to suffer, perhaps all their lives, and that owing to no fault of theirs. Why should it be so? What is the cause? Of whose ignorance is it the result? If not the child's, why should it suffer for its parents' actions?_x000d_ It is much better to confess ignorance than to try to evade the question by the allurements of future enjoyments in proportion to the evil here, or by posing "mysteries". Not only undeserved suffering forced upon us by any agent is immoral--not to say unjust--but even the future-making-up theory has no legs to stand upon._x000d_ How many of the miserably born struggle towards a higher life, and how many more succumb to the circumstances they are placed under? Should those who grow worse and more wicked by being forced to be born under evil circumstances be rewarded in the future for the wickedness of their lives? In that case the more wicked the man is here, the better will be his deserts hereafter._x000d_ There is no other way to vindicate the glory and the liberty of the human soul and reconcile the inequalities and the horrors of this world than by placing the whole burden upon the legitimate cause--our own independent actions or Karma. Not only so, but every theory of the creation of the soul from nothing inevitably leads to fatalism and preordination, and instead of a Merciful Father, places before us a hideous, cruel, and an ever-angry God to worship. And so far as the power of religion for good or evil is concerned, this theory of a created soul, leading to its corollaries of fatalism and predestination, is responsible for the horrible idea prevailing among some Christians and Mohammedans that the heathens are the lawful victims of their swords, and all the horrors that have followed and are following it still._x000d_ But an argument which the philosophers of the Nyaya school have always advanced in favour of reincarnation, and which to us seems conclusive, is this: Our experiences cannot be annihilated. Our actions (Karma) though apparently disappearing, remain still unperceived (Adrishta), and reappear again in their effect as tendencies (Pravrittis). Even little babies come with certain tendencies--fear of death, for example._x000d_ Now if a tendency is the result of repeated actions, the tendencies with which we are born must be explained on that ground too. Evidently we could not have got them in this life; therefore we must have to seek for their genesis in the past. Now it is also evident that some of our tendencies are the effects of the self-conscious efforts peculiar to man; and if it is true that we are born with such tendencies, it rigorously follows that their causes were conscious efforts in the past--that is, we must have been on the same mental plane which we call the human plane, before this present life._x000d_ So far as explaining the tendencies of the present life by past conscious efforts goes, the reincarnationists of India and the latest school of evolutionists are at once; the only difference is that the Hindus, as spiritualists, explain it by the conscious efforts of individual souls, and the materialistic school of evolutionists, by a hereditary physical transmission. The schools which hold to the theory of creation out of nothing are entirely out of court._x000d_ The issue has to be fought out between the reincarnationists who hold that all experiences are stored up as tendencies in the subject of those experiences, the individual soul, and are transmitted by reincarnation of that unbroken individuality--and the materialists who hold that the brain is the subject of all actions and the theory of the transmission through cells._x000d_ It is thus that the doctrine of reincarnation assumes an infinite importance to our mind, for the fight between reincarnation and mere cellular transmission is, in reality, the fight between spiritualism and materialism. If cellular transmission is the all-sufficient explanation, materialism is inevitable, and there is no necessity for the theory of a soul. If it is not a sufficient explanation, the theory of an individual soul bringing into this life the experiences of the past is as absolutely true. There is no escape from the alternative, reincarnation or materialism. Which shall we accept?

U.S.A._x000d_ 6th March, 1895_x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ . . . Do not for a moment think the "Yankees" are practical in religion. In that the Hindu alone is practical, the Yankee in money-making, so that as soon as I depart, the whole thing will disappear. Therefore I want to have a solid ground under my feet before I depart. Every work should be made thorough. . . . You need not insist upon preaching Shri Ramakrishna. Propagate his ideas first, though I know the world always wants the Man first, then the idea. . . . Do not figure out big plans at first, but begin slowly, feel your ground, and proceed up and up._x000d_ . . . Work on, my brave boys. We shall see the light some day._x000d_ Harmony and peace! . . . Let things slowly grow. Rome was not built in a day. The Maharaja of Mysore is dead--one of our greatest hopes. Well! the Lord is great. He will send others to help the cause._x000d_ Send some Kushasanas (small sitting-mats) if you can._x000d_ Yours ever with blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA_x000d_ _________x000d_ Defended by the Brooklyn Ethical Association's _x000d_ President

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:_x000d_ The excellent ladies of the Ramabai circle are laboring under an unfortunate misapprehension. Swami Vivek¬ananda did not at the Pouch mansion or elsewhere in Brooklyn or at any other place deny that widows of high caste Hindoos undergo suffering, He has not, publicly or privately, as far as I am aware, in any way reprobated wise efforts for the education and elevation of Hindoo women. His only allusion in his public addresses in Brooklyn to Hindoo widows was in his lecture on "Ideals of Womanhood, Hindoo, Mohammedan and Christian ", delivered at the Pouch mansion, not a fortnight ago, but on Sunday evening, January 20, five weeks ago. In this lecture he did not even allude to the Pundita Ramabai or her work, and made no such statement as that alleged in your issue of today. His allusion to Hindoo widows was brief and wholly incidental to the main topic of his discourse, and referred exclusively to the property rights of high caste widows under the Hindoo law. These, he asserted, were superior to those guaranteed to widows in this country, giving them absolute possession and control of their inheritance in their husbands' and patrimonial estates. [Dr. Janes erred; Swamiji did not say "patrimonial.”] Unless this statement can be disproved Swami Vivekananda's only assertion in Brooklyn with respect to high caste Hindoo widows goes unchallenged.

The lecture on "Ideals of Womanhood" was introduced with the explanation that the purpose of the speaker was solely to present the ideal side, the broad, general tendency of the respective civilizations with reference to social purity and the position of woman.

There was a nether side, an aspect of degradation, he admitted, in India as well as in countries called Christian, but of this side he did not propose to speak. It would be as unjust to judge India by the nether side as to judge America by the revelations of the Parkhurst investigation and the Lexow committee. Of child marriage and the social disabilities of Hindoo widows, therefore, he said nothing.

As a patriotic Hindoo he presented the type of womanhood on its best and ideal side as developed under the influences of the religion and civilization prevailing in his country. That ideal was the ideal of motherhood. No nobler conception of the mother function as the highest development of the ever womanly nature has ever been presented in my hearing. No more exigent morality, alike _x000d_ obligatory on man and woman, has ever been preached in any pulpit in this City of Churches.

The object of this communication, however, is not merely that of the correction or denial of the misapprehensions expressed and implied in the interview entitled "Ramabai Circle Aroused," but to endeavor to throw some light upon the real attitude of our guest toward the philanthropic movement in which the good ladies of the Ramabai circle are so deeply interested.

The Brooklyn Ethical association numbers among its honorary corresponding members in India a gentleman whose devoted labors in behalf of the education and elevation of high caste Hindoo widows long antedated the work of Ramabai. This gentleman is Babu Sasipada Banergie [Banerjee] of Baranagar, a suburb of Calcutta, himself a Hindoo, who, in defiance of current prejudices, more than thirty years ago embarked on this work of reform, which, with his own good wife as a helper, he has since prosecuted with untiring assiduity and devotion. He has won the respect and indorsement of many of the best citizens of his own faith, as well as of Christians who are sufficiently large hearted and liberal to be capable of seeing that good may sometimes come out of Nazareth. Swami Vivek¬ananda is his friend and believes in his work. I have this assurance from his own lips. The work of Babu Sasipada Banergie has been conducted quietly and without ostentation, but it has been fruitful of good result.

It is not the object aimed at by the Pundita Ramabai that Swami Vivekananda criticises, but the methods adopted for collecting money, and the impossibility, as he believes, of accomplishing large results in the way proposed.

The fact that the Pundita Ramabai is herself a Christian convert is sufficient to repel a great majority even of the liberally inclined high caste Hindoos from encouraging it, as the printed reports of the Ramabai circles are themselves insufficient [?] to demonstrate. Nor will the lofty and not altogether reprehensible pride of the Brahmin permit him to be the recipient of favors rendered possible by the solicitation of money in distant countries from those of an alien faith. To do this would be contrary to a deep seated religious and social prejudice, which, whether we reprobate it or not is an unquestionable fact. The wise helper of his fellow human beings will never waste his strength in kicking against facts. As the reports of Ramabai's work also show, it has been impossible to meet with even a small measure of success save by the assurance that her school was absolutely non-Christian and that no efforts toward proselyting would therein be tolerated. A breath of suspicion that this rule was in danger of being violated, some time since, caused a considerable secession of pupils from her school, and the resignation of all the members of a board of advisors consisting of high caste Hindoo gentlemen of great liberality and the highest social standing.

That the practice of the Swami Vivekananda, while in this country, has been consistent with this high conception of duty, I have had occasion to know. Though he has at heart a noble enterprise for the education of the religious teachers of his own faith in sociology, economics and the better things in our Western civilization, he has made absolutely no effort to solicit subscriptions for this purpose. Nor will he accept one penny for his work as a teacher; nor even for this larger work, save as a voluntary, free will offering from people of calm judgment, intellectually convinced of the importance of the work.

In Brooklyn he has absolutely declined to hold classes where an admission fee is charged, even for the purpose of paying the expenses of the room and advertising.

For himself he accepts from public lectures only what is necessary for traveling expenses and his food, clothing and lodging, from week to week.

I personally know of one instance where he returned to an enthusiastic admirer a check for $500 freely given, declining to receive it because he did not need it, and feared the donor was carried away with undue enthusiasm.

Those who know the Swami Vivekananda best write in testimony to his nobility of character, and the purity and elevation of his daily life. I have made diligent inquiry in Chicago, where he has many devoted friends; in Cambridge, where his lectures and classes were attended by people of the highest culture, including students of the university, and elsewhere, and have heard but one reply.

In the town hall of Calcutta, on September 5 last, a large meeting of his own people was held, which in terms of unqualified eulogy indorsed his character and work. This meeting was reported in the Indian Mirror of the day following, together with a sketch of his life and experiences, from one acquainted with his entire career.

The New York Sun of September 2, contained an account of a similar meeting held in Madras.

From Professor Rhys Davids we have the assurance that the gentlemen participating in these meetings are of the highest standing in the community.

We are justified, therefore, in regarding the word of the Swami Vivekananda as above reproach, and we know him to be in full sympathy with all wise movements for the elevation and improvement of the people, both here and in his own country.

That India has something to teach us, that our obligations are reciprocal, he unquestionably believes and teaches. And in this conclusion, when we rid ourselves of our ethnic narrowness, I, for one, believe we shall agree with him.

I need only add that I have written without consultation with Swami Vivekananda, and have said in his behalf some things which his modesty and position as a religious teacher would doubtless prevent him from saying for himself:

LEWISS G.JANES_x000d_ President Brooklyn Ethical Association _x000d_ Brooklyn, March 3 [February 24], 1895.

Through the vistas of the past the voice of the centuries is coming down to us; the voice of the sages of the Himalayas and the recluses of the forest; the voice that came to the Semitic races; the voice that spoke through Buddha and other spiritual giants; the voice that comes from those who live in the light that accompanied man in the beginning of the earth--the light that shines wherever man goes and lives with him for ever--is coming to us even now. This voice is like the little rivulets that come from the mountains. Now they disappear, and now they appear again in stronger flow till finally they unite in one mighty majestic flood. The messages that are coming down to us from the prophets and holy men and women of all sects and nations are joining their forces and speaking to us with the trumpet voice of the past. And the first message it brings us is: Peace be unto you and to all religions. It is not a message of antagonism, but of one united religion.

Let us study this message first. At the beginning of this century it was almost feared that religion was at an end. Under the tremendous sledge-hammer blows of scientific research, old superstitions were crumbling away like masses of porcelain. Those to whom religion meant only a bundle of creeds and meaningless ceremonials were in despair; they were at their wit's end. Everything was slipping between their fingers. For a time it seemed inevitable that the surging tide of agnosticism and materialism would sweep all before it. There were those who did not dare utter what they thought. Many thought the case hopeless and the cause of religion lost once and for ever.

But the tide has turned and to the rescue has come--what? The study of comparative religions. By the study of different religions we find that in essence they are one.

When I was a boy, this scepticism reached me, and it seemed for a time as if I must give up all hope of religion. But fortunately for me I studied the Christian religion, the Mohammedan, the Buddhistic, and others, and what was my surprise to find that the same foundation principles taught by my religion were also taught by all religions. It appealed to me this way.

What is the truth? I asked. Is this world true? Yes. Why? Because I see it. Are the beautiful sounds we just heard (the vocal and instrumental music) true? Yes. Because we heard them. We know that man has a body, eyes, and ears, and he has a spiritual nature which we cannot see. And with his spiritual faculties he can study these different religions and find that whether a religion is taught in the forests and jungles of India or in a Christian land, in essentials all religions are one. This only shows us that religion is a constitutional necessity of the human mind. The proof of one religion depends on the proof of all the rest. For instance, if I have six fingers, and no one else has, you may well say that is abnormal. The same reasoning may be applied to the argument that only one religion is true and all others false. One religion only, like one set of six fingers in the world, would be unnatural. We see, therefore, that if one religion is true, all others must be true. There are differences in non-essentials, but in essentials they are all one. If my five fingers are true, they prove that your five fingers are true too. Wherever man is, he must develop a belief, he must develop his religious nature.

And another fact I find in the study of the various religions of the world is that there are three different stages of ideas with regard to the soul and God.

In the first place, all religions admit that, apart from the body which perishes, there is a certain part or something which does not change like the body, a part that is immutable, eternal, that never dies; but some of the later religions teach that although there is a part of us that never dies, it had a beginning. But anything that has a beginning must necessarily have an end. We--the essential part of us--never had a beginning, and will never have an end.

And above us all, above this eternal nature, there is another eternal Being, without end--God.

People talk about the beginning of the world, the beginning of man. The word beginning simply means the beginning of the cycle. It nowhere means the beginning of the whole Cosmos. It is impossible that creation could have a beginning. No one of you can imagine a time of beginning. That which has a beginning must have an end. "Never did I not exist, nor you, nor will any of us ever hereafter cease to be," says the Bhagavad-Gita. Wherever the beginning of creation is mentioned, it means the beginning of a cycle. Your body will meet with death, but your soul, never.

Along with this idea of the soul we find another group of ideas in regard to its perfection. The soul in itself is perfect. The Old Testament of the Hebrews admits man perfect at the beginning. Man made himself impure by his own actions. But he is to regain his old nature, his pure nature. Some speak of these things in allegories, fables, and symbols. But when we begin to analyse these statements, we find that they all teach that the human soul is in its very nature perfect, and that man is to regain that original purity.

How? By knowing God. Just as the Bible says, "No man can see God but through the Son." What is meant by it? That seeing God is the aim and goal of all human life. The sonship must come before we become one with the Father. Remember that man lost his purity through his own actions. When we suffer, it is because of our own acts; God is not to be blamed for it.

Closely connected with these ideas is the doctrine--which was universal before the Europeans mutilated it--the doctrine of reincarnation. Some of you may have heard of and ignored it. This idea of reincarnation runs parallel with the other doctrine of the eternity of the human soul. Nothing which ends at one point can be without a beginning and nothing that begins at one point can be without an end. We cannot believe in such a monstrous impossibility as the beginning of the human soul. The doctrine of reincarnation asserts the freedom of the soul.

Suppose there was an absolute beginning. Then the whole burden of this impurity in man falls upon God. The all-merciful Father responsible for the sins of the world! If sin comes in this way, why should one suffer more than another? Why such partiality, if it comes from an all-merciful God? Why are millions trampled underfoot? Why do people starve who never did anything to cause it? Who is responsible? If they had no hand in it, surely, God would be responsible.

Therefore the better explanation is that one is responsible for the miseries one suffers. If I set the wheel in motion, I am responsible for the result. And if I can bring misery, I can also stop it. It necessarily follows that we are free. There is no such thing as fate. There is nothing to compel us. What we have done, that we can undo.

To one argument in connection with this doctrine I will ask your patient attention, as it is a little intricate. We gain all our knowledge through experience; that is the only way. What we call experiences are on the plane of consciousness. For illustration: A man plays a tune on a piano, he places each finger on each key consciously. He repeats this process till the movement of the fingers becomes a habit. He then plays a tune without having to pay special attention to each particular key. Similarly, we find in regard to ourselves that our tendencies are the result of past conscious actions. A child is born with certain tendencies. Whence do they come? No child is born with a tabula rasa --with a clean, blank page--of a mind. The page has been written on previously. The old Greek and Egyptian philosophers taught that no child came with a vacant mind. Each child comes with a hundred tendencies generated by past conscious actions. It did not acquire these in this life, and we are bound to admit that it must have had them in past lives.

The rankest materialist has to admit that these tendencies are the result of past actions, only they add that these tendencies come through heredity. Our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents come down to us through this law of heredity. Now if heredity alone explains this, there is no necessity of believing in the soul at all, because body explains everything.

We need not go into the different arguments and discussions on materialism and spiritualism. So far the way is clear for those who believe in an individual soul. We see that to come to a reasonable conclusion we must admit that we have had past lives. This is the belief of the great philosophers and sages of the past and of modern times. Such a doctrine was believed in among the Jews. Jesus Christ believed in it. He says in the Bible, "Before Abraham was, I am." And in another place it is said, "This is Elias who is said to have come."

All the different religions which grew among different nations under varying circumstances and conditions had their origin in Asia, and the Asiatics understand them well. When they came out from the motherland, they got mixed up with errors. The most profound and noble ideas of Christianity were never understood in Europe, because the ideas and images used by the writers of the Bible were foreign to it.

Take for illustration the pictures of the Madonna. Every artist paints his Madonna according to his own pre-conceived ideas. I have been seeing hundreds of pictures of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ, and he is made to sit at a table. Now, Christ never sat at a table; he squatted with others, and they had a bowl in which they dipped bread--not the kind of bread you eat today.

It is hard for any nation to understand the unfamiliar customs of other people. How much more difficult was it for Europeans to understand the Jewish customs after centuries of changes and accretions from Greek, Roman, and other sources! Through all the myths and mythologies by which it is surrounded it is no wonder that the people get very little of the beautiful religion of Jesus, and no wonder that they have made of it a modern shop-keeping religion.

To come to our point. We find that all religions teach the eternity of the soul, as well as that its lustre has been dimmed, and that its primitive purity is to be regained by the knowledge of God.

What is the idea of God in these different religions? The primary idea of God was very vague. The most ancient nations had different Deities--sun, earth, fire, water.

Among the ancient Jews we find numbers of these gods ferociously fighting with each other. Then we find Elohim whom the Jews and the Babylonians worshipped. We next find one God standing supreme. But the idea differed according to different tribes. They each asserted that their God was the greatest. And they tried to prove it by fighting. The one that could do the best fighting proved thereby that its God was the greatest.

Those races were more or less savage. But gradually better and better ideas took the place of the old ones. All those old ideas are gone or going into the lumber-room. All those religions were the outgrowth of centuries; not one fell from the skies. Each had to be worked out bit by bit.

Next come the monotheistic ideas: belief in one God, who is omnipotent and omniscient, the one God of the universe. This one God is extra-cosmic; he lies in the heavens. He is invested with the gross conceptions of His originators. He has a right side and a left side, and a bird in His hand, and so on and so forth. But one thing we find, that the tribal gods have disappeared for ever, and the one God of the universe has taken their place: the God of gods. Still He is only an extra-cosmic God. He is unapproachable; nothing can come near Him.

But slowly this idea has changed also, and at the next stage we find a God immanent in nature. In the New Testament it is taught, "Our Father who art in heaven"--God living in the heavens separated from men. We are living on earth and He is living in heaven. Further on we find the teaching that He is a God immanent in nature; He is not only God in heaven, but on earth too. He is the God in us. In the Hindu philosophy we find a stage of the same proximity of God to us.

But we do not stop there. There is the non-dualistic stage, in which man realises that the God he has been worshipping is not only the Father in heaven, and on earth, but that "I and my Father are one." He realises in his soul that he is God Himself, only a lower expression of Him. All that is real in me is He; all that is real in Him is I. The gulf between God and man is thus bridged. Thus we find how, by knowing God, we find the kingdom of heaven within us.

In the first or dualistic stage, man knows he is a little personal soul, John, James, or Tom; and he says, "I will be John, James, or Tom to all eternity, and never anything else." As well might the murderer come along and say,"I will remain a murderer for ever." But as time goes on, Tom vanishes and goes back to the original pure Adam._x000d_ "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Can we see God? Of course not. Can we know God? Of course not. If God can be known, He will be God no longer. Knowledge is limitation. But I and my Father are one: I find the reality in my soul. These ideas are expressed in some religions, and in others only hinted. In some they were expatriated. Christ's teachings are now very little understood in this country. If you will excuse me, I will say that they have never been very well understood.

The next idea that I want to bring to you is that religion does not consist in doctrines or dogmas. It is not what you read, nor what dogmas you believe that is of importance, but what you realise. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," yea, in this life. And that is salvation. There are those who teach that this can be gained by the mumbling of words. But no great Master ever taught that external forms were necessary for salvation. The power of attaining it is within ourselves. We live and move in God. Creeds and sects have their parts to play, but they are for children, they last but temporarily. Books never make religions, but religions make books. We must not forget that. No book ever created God, but God inspired all the great books. And no book ever created a soul. We must never forget that. The end of all religions is the realising of God in the soul. That is the one universal religion. If there is one universal truth in all religions, I place it here--in realising God. Ideals and methods may differ, but that is the central point. There may be a thousand different radii, but they all converge to the one centre, and that is the realisation of God: something behind this world of sense, this world of eternal eating and drinking and talking nonsense, this world of false shadows and selfishness. There is that beyond all books, beyond all creeds, beyond the vanities of this world, and it is the realisation of God within yourself.

A man may believe in all the churches in the world, he may carry in his head all the sacred books ever written, he may baptise himself in all the rivers of the earth, still, if he has no perception of God, I would class him with the rankest atheist. And a man may have never entered a church or a mosque, nor performed any ceremony, but if he feels God within himself and is thereby lifted above the vanities of the world, that man is a holy man, a saint, call him what you will.

As soon as a man stands up and says he is right or his church is right, and all others are wrong, he is himself all wrong. He does not know that upon the proof of all the others depends the proof of his own. Love and charity for the whole human race, that is the test of true religiousness. I do not mean the sentimental statement that all men are brothers, but that one must feel the oneness of human life. So far as they are not exclusive, I see that the sects and creeds are all mine; they are all grand. They are all helping men towards the real religion. I will add, it is good to be born in a church, but it is bad to die there. It is good to be born a child, but bad to remain a child. Churches, ceremonies, and symbols are good for children, but when the child is grown, he must burst the church or himself. We must not remain children for ever. It is like trying to fit one coat to all sizes and growths. I do not deprecate the existence of sects in the world. Would to God there were twenty millions more, for the more there are, there will be a greater field for selection. What I do object to is trying to fit one religion to every case. Though all religions are essentially the same, they must have the varieties of form produced by dissimilar circumstances among different nations. We must each have our own individual religion, individual so far as the externals of it go.

Many years ago, I visited a great sage of our own country, a very holy man. We talked of our revealed book, the Vedas, of your Bible, of the Koran, and of revealed books in general. At the close of our talk, this good man asked me to go to the table and take up a book; it was a book which, among other things, contained a forecast of the rainfall during the year. The sage said, "Read that." And I read out the quantity of rain that was to fall. He said, "Now take the book and squeeze it." I did so and he said, "Why, my boy, not a drop of water comes out. Until the water comes out, it is all book, book. So until your religion makes you realise God, it is useless. He who only studies books for religion reminds one of the fable of the ass which carried a heavy load of sugar on its back, but did not know the sweetness of it."

Shall we advise men to kneel down and cry, "O miserable sinners that we are!" No, rather let us remind them of their divine nature. I will tell you a story. A lioness in search of prey came upon a flock of sheep, and as she jumped at one of them, she gave birth to a cub and died on the spot. The young lion was brought up in the flock, ate grass, and bleated like a sheep, and it never knew that it was a lion. One day a lion came across the flock and was astonished to see in it a huge lion eating grass and bleating like a sheep. At his sight the flock fled and the lion-sheep with them. But the lion watched his opportunity and one day found the lion-sheep asleep. He woke him up and said, "You are a lion." The other said, "No," and began to bleat like a sheep. But the stranger lion took him to a lake and asked him to look in the water at his own image and see if it did not resemble him, the stranger lion. He looked and acknowledged that it did. Then the stranger lion began to roar and asked him to do the same. The lion-sheep tried his voice and was soon roaring as grandly as the other. And he was a sheep no longer._x000d_ My friends, I would like to tell you all that you are mighty as lions.

Some questions and answers here followed.

Q. A man in the audience said, "If ministers stop preaching hell-fire, they will have no control over their people."_x000d_ A. They had better lose it then. The man who is frightened into religion has no religion at all. Better teach him of his divine nature than of his animal.

Q. Do you believe Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount?_x000d_ A. I do believe he did. But in this matter I have to go by the books as others do, and I am aware that mere book testimony is rather shaky ground. But we are all safe in taking the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount as a guide. We have to take what appeals to our inner spirit. Buddha taught five hundred years before Christ, and his words were full of blessings: never a curse came from his lips, nor from his life; never one from Zoroaster, nor from Confucius.

Q. What did the Lord mean when he said, "The kingdom of heaven is not of this world?"_x000d_ A. That the kingdom of heaven is within us. The Jewish idea was a kingdom of heaven upon this earth. That was not the idea of Jesus.

Q. Do you believe we come up from the animals?_x000d_ A. I believe that, by the law of evolution, the higher beings have come up from the lower kingdoms.

Q. Do you know of anyone who remembers his previous life?_x000d_ A. I have met some who told me they did remember their previous life. They had reached a point where they could remember their former incarnations.

Q. Do you believe in Christ's crucifixion?_x000d_ A. Christ was God incarnate; they could not kill him. That which was crucified was only a semblance, a mirage.

Q. If he could have produced such a semblance as that, would not that have been the greatest miracle of all?_x000d_ A. I look upon miracles as the greatest stumbling-blocks in the way of truth. When the disciples of Buddha told him of a man who had performed a so-called miracle--had taken a bowl from a great height without touching it--and showed him the bowl, he took it and crushed it under his feet and told them never to build their faith on miracles, but to look for truth in everlasting principles. He taught them the true inner light--the light of the spirit, which is the only safe light to go by. Miracles are only stumbling-blocks. Let us brush them aside.

If the room is dark, do you go about beating your chest and crying, "It is dark, dark, dark!" No, the only way to get the light is to strike a light, and then the darkness goes. The only way to realise the light above you is to strike the spiritual light within you, and the darkness of sin and impurity will flee away. Think of your higher self, not of your lower.

THE PUNDITA RAMABAI_x000d_ ___________x000d_ Mrs. McKeen Says She is a Woman _x000d_ Christian or Hindoo can Trust.

The controversy between the friends of the Pundita Ramabai and those of the Hindoo monk, Swami Vivekananda as to the treatment of the child widows of India, though slumbering, is still far from being settled. When Mrs. James McKeen, one of the Pundita's staunchest friends, was asked what she had to say regarding the statement made by Dr. Lewis G. Janes of the Ethical society to the effect that the Hindoo monk had not at any time denied the suffering of the widows detailed by the Pundita, she said:

"It is very gratifying to the friends of the Pundita Ramabai that Dr. Janes who has taken upon himself the responsibility of recommending Swami Vivekananda to this community as a religious teacher, should tell us that his oriental guest `did not at the Pouch mansion or elsewhere in Brooklyn or any other place, deny that widows of high caste Hindoos undergo sufferings.' Nevertheless, in view of the widespread impression to the contrary, in view of the fact that one member of the New York chamber of commerce, whose word is everywhere as good as his bond, distinctly told the writer that he had heard the monk so declare, and once two prominent members of the Ethical association also reported to the writer the same statement, since four reputable and well known citizens unite in giving us the same testimony, since an Eagle report of the lecture in the Historical hall, on February 25, gives the same evidence, and, finally, since one of our own national board heard him so declare at a meeting of a well known Boston literary club, it seems not unreasonable to suppose either the monk's words have been capable of two interpretations, or that our friend has been caught napping in his presidential chair.

"It is pleasant also to record that our learned Pundita quite agrees with Dr. Janes and his Hindoo friend as to the best method to be employed in order to reach the high caste Hindoo widow (whether suffering or not) and give her the priceless boon of education. Ramabai refused to accept the proffered support of a prominent Congregational church in Boston and also a like offer from an Episcopalian church, which would have been glad to enter the field of India with such a helper. She persistently declared that the orthodox high caste Brahmin could only be reached by a non religious school and that she could only accept aid from a body of good men and women of all denominations and of all creeds, who would unite solely for the rescue of these little widows from ignorance and misery.

"As to the position of these widows before the law, it has always been Ramabai's strong contention in her many public discussions of the subject in India, that the Hindoos themselves were transgressing the old laws which they profess to serve, in persecuting these little ones. She has stood as Luther stood at Wittenberg appealing to the scriptures, the law of the church against the church.

As to Baba Sasipada Panergie (Babu Sasipada Banerjee], the friend of Swami Vivekananda, whose work and methods he so wholly approves, I quite agree in according to him all praise. I wish I had now at hand a letter received from him some years ago, explaining his work to our association and asking for our sympathy and aid.

It is difficult to understand what seems to be a rooted antagonism among the cultivated Hindoos toward Ramabai and her work. Perhaps an experience related to me by Mr. Moncure D. Conway may somewhat explain it. Mr. Conway happened to be in Persia when the news reached there of _x000d_ Ramabai's conversion to Christianity. Mr. Conway himself seemed to rather regret the step she had taken. He told me he had seen the young men in Persia fairly gnash their teeth in rage while tears rolled down their cheeks, as they exclaimed, "To think that our Ramabai, our brilliant Ramabai, of whom we were so proud, to think that she has embraced Christianity!" According to Mr. Conway, the very thought of it seemed to fill them with rage and shame.

"It is well known that there is no such bitter hostility as religious hostility. And incredible as it may seem it is a fact that both here and in India some of the hardest blows Ramabai has received have come from men to whom she had given substantial and much needed aid. One Hindoo student who came to this country friendless and poor brought a letter of introduction from Ramabai to her circle with a request to the treasurer to give him For her almost 10 per cent. of her own small income in order to aid him prosecute his studies. The young man accepted the money and settled down to work. Almost the first use he made of his newly acquired power was to attack Ramabai and pronounce her work a failure. I am glad to say this man was not Mr. Vivikananda. The story, however, may illustrate how deep the religious hate of an educated Hindoo may bite.

"The Shawda Sadan [Sharada Sadana] did indeed receive a great blow last year and that, too, at the hands of its professed friends. We are, however, able to report that many of them have repented of their hasty move and some of the most eminent of whom Dr. Janes speaks in high commendation have taken pains to publicly express their renewed confidence in the school. At the latest reports there were fifty-six pupils in the school, with new applications from day to day.

And one word more as to Ramabai's Christianity, which seems to bring upon her what might be called a mild rebuke from our esteemed _x000d_ # _x000d_ president of the Ethical society. No one emphasizes more clearly than Ramabai the ethical side of Hindooism. She is thoroughly loyal to her people, and would neither Anglicize nor Americanize them with a foreign creed. She bears the heart of a Paul and not of a Peter. And from what I have heard her say, from what I have read and heard of her writings, I believe she would hold Christianity as not antagonistic to the best Brahminism, but inclusive of it, as Paul declared on Mars hill, `Whom ye ignorantly worship him declare I unto you.' In short, she is a woman in whom both Hindoo and Christian may safely trust."

L_x000d_ To Mrs. G. W. Hale_x000d_ 54 W. 33rd St., New York_x000d_ 11 March 1895_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ Many thanks for your kind letter. I will be only too glad to have an orange coat, provided it be light as summer is approaching._x000d_ I do not remember whether the Cook's letters of credit I have are limited as to their time or not. It is high time we look into them. If they are limited, don't you think it is better to put them in some bank? I have about a thousand dollars in the Boston bank and a few hundred in the New York__they all go to India by this week or next. So it is better that I look into the Cook's letters, and it will be foolish to get into trouble by hav¬ing them past the date._x000d_ There are a few more Sanskrit books which have not been sent__one pretty thick and broad, the other two very thin. Kindly send them as soon as you can._x000d_ Mrs. [Milward] Adams, Mrs. [Ole] Bull, and Miss Emma Thursby are gone to Chicago today._x000d_ With eternal love to the babies and to you and Father Pope._x000d_ I remain ever your affectionate Son,_x000d_ Vivekananda

On the evening following his second Barber House lecture Swamiji gave a talk at Unity Hall in Hartford, Connecticut (one hundred miles or so by train from New York City). His subject, as announced in the Hartford newspapers, was "God and the Soul." The text of the lecture as reported is the Hartford Times of March 11, 1895, has been published in volume one of the Complete Works under the title "Soul, God, and Religion," but the newspaper report had an opening paragraph not found in full elsewhere. It read:

Vivekananda was greeted by a fine house last night [March 8], and all who went will be glad they did, for talks by high caste Brahmans are not a common occurrence in this latitude. The Brahmans seldom leave their native land: they lose caste by crossing the ocean. But Vivek¬ananda was willing to submit to that to get to Christian lands, for his views are more in consonance with those of Christ than those of many so-called Christians, His broad charity takes in all religions and all nations. The simplicity of his talk last night was charming, and in his long red gown and yellow turban, with his handsome Asiatic face, he was picturesque to the eye as well as fascinating to the ear through his high spiritual ideas. He speaks excellent English, and with an accent that gives added zest to his talk.

Mr. Frank G. Burnham of the South Baptist choir sang very finely, and to the evident delight of the audience, and Mr. C. B. Patterson introduced the speaker, who said:_x000d_ _x000d_ [Here follows Swamiji's talk as later published in volume one of the Complete Works.]

The Swami was also invited to lecture before the Metaphysical Society at Hartford, Conn.; he accepted, and spoke on "Soul and God" on March 8. Of this lecture the Hartford Daily Times wrote: His lectures are more in consonance with those of Christ than those of many so-called Christians. His broad charity takes in all religions and all nations. The simplicity of his talk last night was charming.

Although Mary Hale seems not to have written to Swamiji for a few weeks after this exchange,* soon all was well, as it always had been and ever would be, between Swamiji and the Hales._x000d_ _x000d_ * “I am afraid you are offended and did not answer any of my letters,” Swamiji wrote to Mary Hale in a letter from New York that one guesses should bear the date March 12, 1895, or thereabouts. As presently published in the Complete Works (8: 375), this letter is undated but is placed between those dated March 17 and April 14, 1896. It seems clear from its contents, however, that Swamiji wrote it in March of the previous year. Compare, for instance, his letter to Isabelle McKindley, dated March 12, 1895 (Complete Works, 5: 75-76).

To Mrs. G. W. Hale_x000d_ [54 W. 33rd St., New York]_x000d_ 14 March 1895_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ The last letter you sent over is a notice from the Chicago post office of a parcel received by them. I think it is some books sent to me from India. The rugs cannot come through the post office (?) I do not know what to do. I send you therefore back this notice, and if they deliver it to you, all right__else I hope you will ask them to send it over to New York and kindly give them my address._x000d_ Yours obediently,_x000d_ Vivekananda

Professor Wright no doubt sent on a list of books some of which Swamiji may have found in one or another of New York's three libraries-the Astor, the Lenox, or the Mercantile. ("Every little bit of time I get I spend in the library," he wrote around this period to Mary Hale.)* His scholarly essay, written in other rare hours when he had no classes, visitors, or outside engagements, was published in the March 1895 issue of the Metaphysical Magazine, then a new monthly, and subsequently in volume four of the Complete Works. In its course he pointed out that the theory of reincarnation (a theory much stranger to the average American then than it is today) had arisen only among those ancient people who believed in the independent and eternal (beginningless as well as endless) existence of the individual soul. A sure indication of such a belief, he pointed out, was that those who held it made no attempt to preserve the bodies of their dead by careful burial, as did, for instance, the Egyptians, but quickly burned them, as did the Aryans. "It was in India and among the Aryans," he said, "that the doctrine of the preexistence, the immortality, and the individuality of the soul first arose . . . . This soul is without birth and without death; it is not a compound or combination but an independent individual and as such if cannot be created or destroyed. Given a belief in the soul, independent and eternal, "the question arises: Where was it all this time? The Hindu philosophers say," he continued," `It was passing through different bodies in the physical sense, or, really and metaphysically speaking, passing through different mental planes.'_x000d_ _x000d_ * This letter, published in the Complete Works (8:375), is undated. As far as can be determined by its contents, it was written in mid-March of 1895. See note * for page 37.

Ever rising, ever falling with the waves of time,_x000d_ still rolling on I go_x000d_ From fleeting scene to scene ephemeral,_x000d_ with life's currents' ebb and flow._x000d_ Oh! I am sick of this unending force;_x000d_ these shows they please no more._x000d_ This ever running, never reaching,_x000d_ nor e'en a distant glimpse of shore!_x000d_ From life to life I'm waiting at the gates,_x000d_ alas, they open not._x000d_ Dim are my eyes with vain attempt_x000d_ to catch one ray long sought._x000d_ On little life's high, narrow bridge_x000d_ I stand and see below_x000d_ The struggling, crying, laughing throng._x000d_ For what? No one can know._x000d_ In front yon gates stand frowning dark,_x000d_ and say: "No farther way,_x000d_ This is the limit; tempt not Fate,_x000d_ bear it as best you may;_x000d_ Go, mix with them and drink this cup_x000d_ and be as mad as they._x000d_ Who dares to know but comes to grief;_x000d_ stop then, and with them stay."_x000d_ Alas for me, I cannot rest._x000d_ This floating bubble, earth--_x000d_ Its hollow form, its hollow name,_x000d_ its hollow death and birth--_x000d_ For me is nothing. How I long_x000d_ to get beyond the crust_x000d_ Of name and form! Ah! Ope the gates;_x000d_ to me they open must._x000d_ Open the gates of light, O Mother, to me Thy tired son._x000d_ I long, oh, long to return home!_x000d_ Mother, my play is done._x000d_ You sent me out in the dark to play,_x000d_ and wore a frightful mask;_x000d_ Then hope departed, terror came,_x000d_ and play became a task._x000d_ Tossed to and fro, from wave to wave_x000d_ in this seething, surging sea_x000d_ Of passions strong and sorrows deep,_x000d_ grief is, and joy to be,_x000d_ Where life is living death, alas! And death--_x000d_ who knows but 'tis_x000d_ Another start, another round of this old wheel _x000d_ of grief and bliss?_x000d_ Where children dream bright, golden dreams,_x000d_ too soon to find them dust,_x000d_ And aye look back to hope long lost_x000d_ and life a mass of rust!_x000d_ Too late, the knowledge age doth gain;_x000d_ scarce from the wheel we're gone_x000d_ When fresh, young lives put their strength_x000d_ to the wheel, which thus goes on_x000d_ From day to day and year to year._x000d_ 'Tis but delusion's toy,_x000d_ False hope its motor; desire, nave;_x000d_ its spokes are grief and joy._x000d_ I go adrift and know not whither._x000d_ Save me from this fire!_x000d_ Rescue me, merciful Mother, from floating with desire!_x000d_ Turn not to me Thy awful face,_x000d_ 'tis more than I can bear._x000d_ Be merciful and kind to me,_x000d_ to chide my faults forbear._x000d_ Take me, O Mother, to those shores_x000d_ where strifes for ever cease;_x000d_ Beyond all sorrows, beyond tears,_x000d_ beyond e'en earthly bliss;_x000d_ Whose glory neither sun, nor moon,_x000d_ nor stars that twinkle bright,_x000d_ Nor flash of lightning can express._x000d_ They but reflect its light._x000d_ Let never more delusive dreams_x000d_ veil off Thy face from me._x000d_ My play is done, O Mother,_x000d_ break my chains and make me free!

On March 16, the Standard Union devoted two and a half columns to Ramabai's life and work, dwelling at length and in detail upon the horrors of a widow’s lot in India. The headlines, which are enough to quote, read:

RAMABAI'S WORK_x000d_ __________x000d_ _x000d_ The Achievements of One High Caste Hindoo Woman _x000d_ Her American Supporters_x000d_ Brooklyn Contributes Funds for the Enlightenment Of _x000d_ "Darkest India"-Authentic Descriptions of The _x000d_ Conditions of Child Widows-The Wonderful School_x000d_ At Poona and Some of the Pupils.

SWAMI VIVEKANANDA_x000d_ _x000d_ Lewis G. Janes on the Hindoo Widow Question

To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle:_x000d_ I am strongly disinclined to continue any semblance of controversy with the good ladies of the Ramabai circle. I deprecate, indeed, any interpretation of my previous communication which would regard it as written with controversial intent. My object, on the contrary, was to show that controversy was out of place. It did not originate with us and had been commenced under a misapprehension as to the real attitude of the Swami Vivekananda toward the movement for the education of Hindoo widows. The interview with Mrs. James McKeen, as reported in your issue of last Sunday [March 10], confirms the position taken in my letter of February 24, but which has been wrongly dated March 3, in your issue of March 6, when it was published.

The facts stated by Mrs. McKeen as to the incident related to her by Mr. Moncure D. Conway, strangely located by your reporter in Persia, where there are no Hindoos, and where the Pundita Ramabai probably was never heard of, curiously confirm the practical sagacity of Swami Vivekananda in recognizing the fact that the Hindoo people can be most effectively reached and helped through the teachers of their own faith.

Nor is the repugnance of high caste Hindoos to the ministrations of Christian converts so phenomenal as it may at first appear, when we put ourselves in their place, and reflect upon the spirit with which we habitually regard a so called pervert from Christianity. It is questionable whether, if the most cultivated and devoted lady in Brooklyn should avow her belief in Buddhism or Mohammedism [sic], she would be more acceptable as a reformer of society in this country than the Pundita Ramabai is in India. Human nature is very much the same the world over. I do not question the sincerity or devotion of the Pundita Ramabai. I do not rebuke her Christianity, mildly or otherwise, any more than I rebuke Swami Vivekananda's Hindooism or Mrs. Besant's conversion to Buddhism and Theosophy. I respect the sincere belief of every human being, and would bid them good speed in every effort for the uplifting of humanity.

I deprecate, however, an attack on the Swami Vivekananda, in the name of Ramabai, which I am sure that loyal woman would never have made herself, and the false inference that the unthinking might derive that the Swami was opposed to the education of Hindoo women. This inference we hope to dispose of soon, and effectually, by a lecture which will be delivered by the Swami Vivekananda in Brooklyn, in aid of the educational work of Babu Sasipada Banerjee, so warmly commended by Mrs. McKeen.

The greatest affliction of the Hindoo widow is ignorance. Education will emancipate her from the chief burden which she bears today. Other burdens of ill treatment, abuse, etc., which may exist in some instances are, we doubt not, sporadic and exceptional. When reputed as if they were habitual, one cannot wonder that they excite indignant protest from a patriotic lover of his people.

I will only add in my own behalf that the erroneous date appended to my letter makes it appear to have been written subsequent to the remarks of Swami Vivekananda at Historical hall on February 25, reported in the Eagle of the following day; whereas it was written a day before the delivery of his lecture. And on behalf of the Swami Vivekananda I will add that the report of his remarks in the Eagle was both imperfect and defective. While he repudiated the unfair and extravagant statements about the treatment of Hindoo widows he also declared himself in full sympathy with the movement in favor of their education, as conducted by his friend and compatriot, Sasipada Banerjee._x000d_ LEWIS G. JANES _x000d_ President Brooklyn Ethical Association_x000d_ Brooklyn, March 12, 1895

Swamiji's decision to donate the proceeds of his next (and extra) lecture in Brooklyn to Sasipada Banerjee was his own and was prompted, no doubt, not only by a desire to make his position regarding the education of Hindu widows clear but by Banerjee's need for help in his work. This incident is mentioned somewhat inaccurately and without reference to the Brooklyn controversy, in the first edition of the Life, where it is stated that Swamiji gave over "the proceeds of his lecture on 'The Ideals of Hindu Women,' delivered before the Ethical Association of Brooklyn, to its President, to be forwarded by him to Babu Sashipada Banerjee's Baranagore Boarding School for Hindu Widows." (It was, as we now know, not until long after the lecture on "The Ideals of Hindu Women" that Banerjee entered the picture.) The Life continues: "In forwarding the proceeds Dr. Lewis G. Janes wrote to Sashipada Babu as follows: `This sum constitutes the proceeds of a lecture before our Association by your able countryman, the Swami Vivekananda, who has spoken for us several times before large audiences and created great interest in the Vedanta philosophy and also in the social and political conditions in India. In justice to the Swami I should say that the proposition to give a benefit lecture for your school was his own voluntary idea with which we were delighted to cooperate.'

But despite all evidence and despite Dr. Janes's explanation that Swamiji was not opposed to the education of Hindu women but, on the contrary, was in favor of it, Mrs. McKeen could never forgive Swamiji for having stated (1) that Hindu widows inherited their husbands' wealth, and (2) that they were not ill-treated. These statements had come as a severe shock to a deeply rooted pattern of thought which was not peculiar to the Ramabai Circle, but was common to a generation brought up on Christian missionary propaganda.

Swamiji was fighting a nationwide psychological necessity for a sustained belief in the degraded state of the Oriental races-a belief which had given sanction to Western imperialism and provided a satisfying glow of self righteousness and superiority such as little else could. Robert Ingersoll, the famous agnostic, had pointed out to him: "Fifty years ago you would have been hanged if you had come to preach in this country, or you would have been burned alive. You would have been stoned out of the villages, if you had come even much later. Although by the 1890s there was a growing segment of the people who heard Swamiji's lectures with relief and rejoicing, who championed him and whom he championed, Ingersoll even now advised caution. Contemplating the ire of Mrs. McKeen, who was representative of thousands, one can well see why. The Ramabai Circle, like the missionary circles, did not hesitate to vilify him.

To Mrs. G. W. Hale_x000d_ 54 W. 33., New York_x000d_ 18 March [February] 1895_x000d_ Dear Mother,_x000d_ I am sure you are all right by this time. The babies write from time to time and so I get your news regularly. Miss Mary is in a lecturing mood now__good for her. Hope she will not let her energies fritter away now__a penny saved is a penny gained. Sister Isabel[le] has sent me the French Books and the Calcutta pamphlets have arrived, but the big Sanskrit books ought to come. I want them badly. Make them payable here, if possible, or I will send you the postage._x000d_ I am doing very well. Only some of these big dinners kept me late, and I returned home at 2 o'clock in the morning several days. Tonight I am going to one of these. This will be the last of its kind. So much keeping up the night is not good for me. Every day from 11 to 1 o'clock I have classes in my rooms and I talk [to] them till they [grow] tired. The Brooklyn course ended yesterday. Another lecture I have there next Monday._x000d_ Bean soup and rice or barley is now my general diet. I am faring well. Financially I am making the ends meet and nothing more because I do not charge anything for the classes I have in my rooms. And the public lectures have to go through so many hands._x000d_ I have a good many lectures planned ahead in New York, which I hope to deliver by and by. Sister Isabel wrote to me a beautiful letter and she does so much for me. My eternal grati¬tude to her._x000d_ Baby has stopped writing; I do not know why._x000d_ Kindly tell Baby to send me a little Sanskrit book which came from India. I forgot to bring it over. I want to translate some passages from it._x000d_ Mr. [Charles M.] Higgins is full of joy. It was he who planned all this for me, and he is so glad that everything suc¬ceeded so well._x000d_ Mrs. Guernsey is going to give up this house and going to some other house. Miss [Florence] Guernsey wants to marry but her father and mother do not like it at all. I am very sorry for her, poor "Sister Jenny" __and so many men are after her. Here is a very rich railway gentleman called Mr. [Austin] Corbin; his only daughter, Miss [Anna] Corbin, is very much interested in me. And though she is one of the leaders of the 400, she is very intellectual and spiritual too, in a way. Their house is always chock full of swells and foreign aristocracy. Princes and Barons and whatnot from all over the world. Some of these foreigners are very bright. I am sorry your home manufactured aristocracy is not very interesting. Behind her parlor she has a long arbour with all sorts of palms and seats and electric light. There I will have a little class next week of a score of long pockets. The Fun is not bad. "This world is a great humbug after all", Mother. "God alone is real; everything else is a dream only." Mother Temple says she does not like to be bossed by you and that is why she does not come to Chicago. She is very happy nearby. Between swells and Delmonico and Waldorf dinners, my health was going to be injured. So I quickly turned a thorough vegetarian to avoid all invitations. The rich are really the salt of this world__they are neither food nor drink. Good¬bye for the present._x000d_ Your ever affectionate Son,_x000d_ Vivekananda_x000d_ L

_x000d_ * One’s guess is that in likening Miss Florence Guernsey to “Sister Jenny” Swamiji was referring to the old nursery rhyme, which the Hale sisters may have taught him. Robin Redbreast promised Jenny Wren that if she would be his wife he would dress her “like a goldfinch or any peacock gay.” She replies that that is all very nice, but “I must wear my plain brown gown and never go so fine.”

Aside from holding daily classes at his quarters on Thirty third Street, the Swami occasionally spoke to small gatherings elsewhere. In February of 1895, for instance, he was invited to hold classes at the home of a Miss Corbin, the daughter of Mr. Austin Corbin, a wealthy and socially prominent railway magnate. "Here is a very rich railway gentleman called Mr. Corbin," he wrote to Mrs. Hale on February 18: "His only daughter, Miss Corbin, is very much interested in me. And though she is one of the leaders of the 400, she is very intellectual and spiritual too in a way…. Behind her parlour she has a long arbour with all sorts of palms and seats and electric light. There I will have a little class next week of a score of long-pockets." But these classes, which the Swami held on Sundays in Miss Corbin's conservatory, lasted less than a month. He cared nothing for rich or poor; he cared only for earnestness in those who attended his classes, and this quality he found, perhaps, more prominent in those who came to his own poor quarters than in the "long-pockets" who came to Miss Corbin's.

The Swami no doubt gave other public lectures during the first part of 1895. "I have a good many lectures planned ahead in New York, which I hope to deliver by and by," he wrote to Mrs. Hale on February 18. But unfortunately, we have at present no exact records or notes of any of his talks, private or public, delivered during this period. Yet his lectures and classes lived vividly in the memories of those' who heard them.

Let my first word be that all this about Swami Vivekananda is absolute falsehood from beginning to end. Nothing could be more false. We all enjoyed every day of the six weeks he spent with us. . . . He was invited by the different clubs of gentlemen in Detroit, and dinners were given him in beautiful homes so that greater numbers might meet him and talk with him and hear him talk, . . . And everywhere and at all times he was, as he deserved to be, honoured and respected. No one knew him without respecting his integrity and excellence of character and his strong religious nature. At Annisquam last summer I had a cottage and we wrote Vivekananda, who was in Boston, inviting him again to visit us there, which he did, remaining three weeks, not only conferring a favour upon us, but a great pleasure I am sure, to friends who had cottages near us. My servants, I have had many years and they are all still with me. Some of them went with us to Annisquam, the others were at home. You can see how wholly without foundation are all these stories. Who this woman in Detroit is, of whom you speak, I do not know. I only know this that every word of her story is as untrue and false as possible. . . . We all know Vivekananda. Who are they that they speak so falsely?

Earlier in this chapter we have quoted at length one of Mrs. Bagley's eloquent letters (dated June 22, 1894) written in defence of the Swami. Let us here quote another, dated March 20, 1895, in which she writes to the same friend apropos of the slander spread by the Ramabai Circles:

54 W. 33rd St., New York,_x000d_ 21st March, 1895_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ I am astonished to hear the scandals the Ramabai circles are indulging in about me. Don't you see, Mrs. Bull, that however a man may conduct himself, there will always be persons who invent the blackest lies about him? At Chicago I had such things every day against me. And these women are invariably the very Christian of Christians! . . . I am going to have a series of paid lectures in my rooms (downstairs), which will seat about a hundred persons, and that will cover the expenses. I am in no great hurry about the money to be sent to India. I will wait. Is Miss Farmer with you? Is Mrs. Peake at Chicago? Have you seen Josephine Locke? Miss Hamlin has been very kind to me and does all she can to help me._x000d_ My master used to say that these names, as Hindu, Christian, etc., stand as great bars to all brotherly feelings between man and man. We must try to break them down first. They have lost all their good powers and now only stand as baneful influences under whose black magic even the best of us behave like demons. Well, we will have to work hard and must succeed._x000d_ That is why I desire so much to have a centre. Organisation has its faults, no doubt, but without that nothing can be done. And here, I am afraid, I will have to differ from you--that no one ever succeeded in keeping society in good humour and at the same time did great works. One must work as the dictate comes from within, and then if it is right and good, society is bound to veer round, perhaps centuries after one is dead and gone. We must plunge heart and soul and body into the work. And until we be ready to sacrifice everything else to one Idea and to one alone, we never, never will see the light._x000d_ Those that want to help mankind must take their own pleasure and pain, name and fame, and all sorts of interests, and make a bundle of them and throw them into the sea, and then come to the Lord. This is what all the Masters said and did._x000d_ I went to Miss Corbin's last Saturday and told her that I should not be able to come to hold classes any more. Was it ever in the history of the world that any great work was done by the rich? It is the heart and the brain that do it ever and ever and not the purse._x000d_ My idea and all my life with it--and to God for help; to none else! This is the only secret of success. I am sure you are one with me here. My love to Mrs. Thursby and Mrs. Adams._x000d_ Ever yours in grateful affection,_x000d_ Vivekananda

On March 21, 1895, he wrote to Mrs. Bull: "I am astonished to hear the scandals the Ramabai circles are indulging in about me. Among others, one item is that Mrs. Bagley of Detroit had to dismiss a servant girl on account of my bad character!!! Don't you see, Mrs. Bull, that however a man may conduct himself, there will always be persons who invent the blackest lies about him. At Chicago I had such things every day against me. And these women are invariably the very Christian of Christians! Is it a wonder that the Hindus call them untouch¬ables and only ceremonial baths can cleanse a person from touching of these?

I am glad to know that the story was not circulated by R-. If I find it possible I wish to see Mrs. S-- and ask her what her authority for such a statement was. I shall do it quietly of course, but I am going to find out for once, if possible, who starts these lies about Vivekananda. These things travel fast, and if once one is uprooted, perhaps these women will stop to think before they circulate a story so readily. If only they would investigate them they would find how false they all are. . .

This dignified and powerful refutation of the scandals circu¬lated against the Swami was supplemented by another letter written on the following day by Mrs. Bagley's daughter Helen. It read:

54 W., 33 New York_x000d_ 27th March, 1895_x000d_ Dear Sister {Isabelle McKindley},_x000d_ Your kind note gave me pleasure inexpressible. I was also able to read it through very easily. I have at last hit upon the orange and have got a coat, but could not as yet get any in summer material. If you get any, kindly inform me. I will have it made here in New York. Your wonderful Dearborn Ave. misfit tailor is too much even for a monk._x000d_ Sister Locke writes me a long letter and perhaps wondering at my delay in reply. She is apt to be carried away by enthusiasm; so I am waiting, and again I do not know what to answer. Kindly tell her from me that it is impossible for me to fix any place just now. Mrs. Peake though noble, grand, and very spiritual, is as much clever in worldly matter as I, yet I am getting cleverer every day. Mrs. Peake has been offered, by some one whom she knows only hazily in Washington, a place for summer._x000d_ Who knows that she will not be played upon? This is a wonderful country for cheating, and 99.9 per cent have some motive in the background to take advantage of others. If anyone just but closes his eyes for a moment, he is gone !! Sister Josephine is fiery. Mrs. Peake is a simple good woman. I have been so well handled by the people here that I look round me for hours before I take a step. Everything will come to right. Ask Sister Josephine to have a little patience._x000d_ You are every day finding kindergarten better than running an old man's home I am sure. You saw Mrs. Bull, and I am sure you were quite surprised to find her so tame and gentle. Do you see Mrs. Adams now and then? Mrs. Bull has been greatly benefited by her lessons. I also took a few, but no use; the ever increasing load in front does not allow me to bend forward as Mrs.Adams wants it. If I try to bend forward in walking, the centre of gravity comes to the surface of the stomach, and so I go cutting front somersaults._x000d_ No millionaire coming? Not even a few hundred thousands? Sorry, very sorry!!! I am trying my best; what I can do? My classes are full of women. You ofcourse cannot marry a woman. Well, have patience. I will keep my eyes open and never let go an opportunity. If you do not get one, it would not be owing to any laziness at least on my part._x000d_ Life goes on the same old ruts. Sometimes I get disgusted with eternal lecturings and talkings, want to be silent for days and days._x000d_ Hoping you the best dreams (for that is the only way to be happy)._x000d_ I remain ever your loving bro.,_x000d_ Vivekananda

To judge from the above reports, it would appear that far from giving a detailed reply to the women of the Ramabai Circle, Swamiji had not so much as mentioned the condition of widows in India. He neither repeated his earlier statements, nor did he attempt to substantiate them by citing authorities other than himself: Rather, by explaining the significance of India's customs and the Hindus' attitude toward meddlesome foreigners, he had placed the specific problem of widows in a new light, thereby cutting at the very root of his opponents' position. And his words, as is clear by the fervor with which he spoke them, were fraught with power. But whatever deep and lasting effect this impassioned lecture had on the public, Swamiji had not given a point-by-point reply to Mrs. McKeen's seemingly documented contentions, and therefore the issues in question were left in midair. Were or were not Hindu widows mistreated by law? Mrs. McKeen said yes; Swamiji said no. There the matter stood, and at this point the good Dr. Janes once again took up his pen.

In Hindu society the widows represented an informal order of nuns, who, though not secluded in convents, lived in every essential respect the life of monastics. If such lives could be thought of as evidences of ill-treatment, then with equal justification one could consider the austere and rigorous lives of Christian nuns to be evidences of Christian cruelty. In both cases the life was one of hardship, but also in both cases it was one traditionally endured for the sake of a lofty religious ideal. Traditionally, the Hindu widow, rich or poor, young or old, divested herself of jewelry, donned coarse cloth, and cut her hair. Nun like, she subsisted on plain fare, slept on a hard bed, and did not join in the secular festivities of the family. But while observing these hard rules of widowhood, which could not be violated, she was treated with the utmost tenderness and sympathy by her parents or in-laws and was helped to endure the disciplines of her life and to grow strong in their observance.

Child widows, of whom there were not many, but with whom Ramabai was particularly concerned, were, in the vast majority of cases, naturally given as much love and care as were other daughters of the family, and while they may not have at first understood the reasons for observing the rules of widowhood, those rules were made as easy as possible for them to follow and in no sense involved servitude, isolation, or degradation. Child marriage was, of course, in itself frowned upon by Swamiji. "I hate the very name of marriage in regard to a boy or girl, he had written in May of 1894 to Swami Saradananda. And again, on December 23, 1895, "I have a strong hatred of child marriage. I have suffered terribly from it and it is the great sin for which our nation has to suffer. . . . I must set my foot to the best of my ability upon this devilish custom of child marriage. . . . I can kill the man who gets a husband for a baby. But while Swamiji deplored the custom of child marriage, it did not follow that girls who were widowed were cruelly treated or that, not remarrying, their lives were hence forth blighted. To Swamiji, as to most Hindus, a married life was not the end and all of human aspiration. In India the life of spiritual renunciation, which the widow undertook, was universally considered to be a far more exalted and fruitful life than that of matrimony, and while the dedicated life of the widow was, to be sure, never one of comfort, its reward was great. The remarkable fact was that the widow, whatever her previous disposition may have been, often developed the prized qualities of endurance, fortitude, selflessness, and serenity. Devoting herself to religious practices she became spiritually alive; she was an asset to the community, her leadership and advice were sought after, and she was looked upon by all with respect often amounting to reverence.

As for the economic status of Hindu widows, Dr. Janes had dealt with it thoroughly and adequately. We might add here, however, that although it was true that women did not inherit anything from their fathers [in this respect Janes had earlier misquoted Swamiji, who had not mentioned patrimonial in-heritance], it was not true that their fathers ignored them. It may not have been known to Mrs. McKeen and her kind, but Hindu parents were also very affectionate to their daughters and, in lieu of a legacy, provided them with as big a dowry as possible, often going into debt to do so. Furthermore, parents adorned their daughters on the eve of their marriage with as many gold ornaments as they could, all of which were in¬violably theirs. Even in times of emergency a Hindu would be reluctant to ask his wife to sell her jewelry. Indeed, throughout their married life he himself bestowed upon her as many gold bangles and other ornaments as he was able, so that in the event of her widowhood she would have a treasure to fall back upon.

It was, to be sure, the case that many Hindu men were poor and many Hindu widows had few gold bangles. It was also the case that the widows, like millions of other Hindus, were in need of education and that, like millions of other Hindus, some were not "in a position," as Mrs. McKeen had pointed out, "to meet expenses even of board and clothing." No one, least of all Swamiji, denied the fact that education was called for in India; as is well known, one of his most urgent plans for the regeneration of his country was the education of Hindu women-whether widowed, married, or unmarried. Again and again one reads in his letters to his disciples and brother monks his heartfelt belief in the importance of woman's place in his country. "Can you better the condition of your women?" he wrote in December of 1893. "Then there will be hope for your well-being. Otherwise you will remain as backward as you are now: And in another letter written in 1895: "There is no chance for the welfare of the world unless the condition of women is improved. It is not possible for a bird to fly on only one wing."20 Indeed, if one were to quote all of Swamiji's admonitions to his countrymen regarding the necessity of educating Hindu women, many pages would be covered.

Nor was it true that he did not welcome help from America and other foreign countries. His main purpose in coming to America was precisely to seek financial help. Unfortunately, as in the case of explaining the significance of a widow's life, the good Dr. Janes had failed in explaining why Swamiji did not like to receive aid from non-Hindus after Ramabai's fashion. Yet this was a simple matter. Even a member of the Ramabai Circle would surely have understood that a person would rather starve with his own people than receive charity From those who condemned them; a question of self respect was involved. It was this same question that was involved in receiving foreign help in India. Swamiji was keenly aware that help is of two sorts and that what was ordinarily given to his country by foreigners was almost invariably contaminated by contempt. This was true of the "help" given by the Christian missionaries and, to almost the same extent, it was true of that given by the Ramabai Circle. Swamiji had made it clear, particularly in his lectures in Detroit, that such help was worse than none, for it sapped the self respect of the nation which received it and thus served to ruin rather than to restore.

Swamiji's disapproval of the methods of Ramabai was based on the fact that she had deliberately catered to the psychological urge of the American women of that era to play the part of Lady Bountiful to some poor unfortunates-preferably a whole class of poor unfortunates. Moreover, Ramabai's own psychology was somewhat strange and tended to disqualify her as a true servant of India. While her unusual and romantic life made her particularly appealing to Western women of Mrs. McKeen's generation, one can hardly think that an isolated upbringing fitted her to enter into Hindu society and become a judge of its complex conditions. Undoubtedly Ramabai was much concerned with the lot of Hindu women, particularly widows, and more particularly child widows. Her interest was sincere and intense, but one cannot think that it was in any way enlightened. On reading her book and excerpts from her lectures, one sees very clearly that her judgments were based almost entirely on an emotional response to external appearances rather than on a thoughtful and level-headed understanding of the underlying facts. Indeed, so lacking was Ramabai in a real grasp of India's problems that, in order to serve the cause of the Hindus, she condemned them wholesale and with much fanfare. Furthermore, Ramabai had repudiated Hinduism and identified herself with another religion, the determined missionary purpose of which was to destroy everything Hindu. Whatever her personal justification may have been for this shift of loyalty, the fact remained that her Christian conversion inevitably cast suspicion on her school in Poona.

In this connection, it should be pointed out that these was no question of religious prejudice in the Hindus' distrust of Christian institutions. If the Christians were regarded with a wary eye it was not because they were followers of Christ but because they were avowed enemies of Hinduism. Whatever Mrs. McKeen or Ramabai herself may have said to the contrary, the attitude of the Ramabai Circle toward India would indicate that Ramabai was no exception to the general run of nineteenth-century Christians. Although, unlike the missionaries, she had extolled Hindu ideals, the net effect of her campaign was, it would appear, the same as theirs. Under her tutelage her followers had manifestly developed no respect for Hindu customs and no love for the Hindu people; as for Hindu ideals, they became infuriated at the very mention of them. It was for this reason that, while Swamiji never criticized Ramabai, he could never have sanctioned her methods of obtaining help for her work.

On the other hand, Mr. Sasipada Banerjee, whom, inciden¬tally, Swamiji had also helped in the past, had not forsaken his own religion for one which sought to destroy it. Although the Brahmo Samaj, of which he was a member, advocated many social reforms horrifying to the orthodox, it was still a part of Hinduism, and while Banerjee may have stepped outside the pale of orthodox Hindu society by becoming a Brahmo Samajist, he remained, nevertheless, within the fold of the Hindu religion. His educational work was, on the whole, in keeping with the reform program of the Samaj, with which Swamiji, as he had written to Professor Wright, was in sympathy. It is true that in certain details Banerjee's method of work left much to be desired. As Mrs. McKeen was quick to point out, it was similar to that of Ramabai, characterized by an undignified and toadying appeal for foreign help. Whether or not Swamiji knew these unfortunate and damning circumstances is a question that we cannot answer, nor is it altogether important. His main reason for supporting Banerjee rather than Ramabai was that Banerjee was a Hindu trying to help Hindu widows and, as such, was worthy of help.

As long as Western help was characterized by patronage and vilification, Swamiji would have none of it; he would accept only such help for his country as was given in sympathy and respect. Thc type of foreign aid he had in mind was later demonstrated by the lives of those Western men and women who, at his request, devoted themselves to the service of India. Perhaps the most representative of these was Sister Nivedita, who, in serving the Hindus, became a part of their society, and whose _x000d_ # _x000d_ help never undermined in the slightest the strength of those who received it.

Was it possible for Mrs. McKeen, whom we may take to be typical of a large number of American women of her era, to have understood those things? Could she, for instance, have understood the spiritual foundation of the Hindu widow's life? Could she have understood that a life of asceticism was not necessarily one of brutal treatment? And could she have understood that help given in contempt and pity was deadly to the recipient? Whether she could have understood these things or not, Swamiji had made no effort to explain them to her or her friends in his lecture of April 7.

And thus Swamiji's last serious battle with India's Western "benefactors" came to a close, It is true that now and then an unwary Christian missionary would fulminate against the heathen, but all concerted and influential opposition to Swamiji was henceforth silent. The tide of bigotry had been turned; nor was it argumentation that had turned it, for no bigot was ever silenced by reason. Some other element must have been involved, and one can only think that somehow, by means known only to himself, Swamiji had in Brooklyn exerted the same power as he had in Detroit, where, in one final lecture, he had silenced the cavilings of the Christian missionaries. It would almost seem as though he raised himself on such occasions to a position where he could reach the deep levels of all minds and, being himself only good and bent on doing only good to others, removed from those minds much that was harmful and untrue. Only a Swami Vivekananda could have the ability to reach the collective mind at its unconscious level and there influence it; and in view of our knowledge that he had that power, is it too farfetched to think that when necessary he used it?_x000d_ ¬

As we have seen the Swami's scheduled lectures before the, Brooklyn Ethical Association overlapped the start of his classes in New York and Brooklyn; nevertheless they marked the close of the period of his mission during which he had lectured far and wide, defending the religion and customs of India, giving the lie to the Christian critics of this country, and spreading the lofty ideals of Hinduism at its best.

Swamiji would be away from New York for ten days, but it had not been to escape from Miss Hamlen's advice, or, for that matter, from Landsberg's temper, that he had left town. The explanation was simple enough: he was tired to the point of exhaustion, and he had received an invitation from Mr. Francis H. Leggett to spend the Easter holidays at his country place in the Hudson River Valley, eighty miles or so above New York. One might say that Swamiji jumped at this god sent chance for rest and peace. He had been working steadily for many months-in December in Cambridge, in January in Chicago, in February, March, and a part of April in New York, not to speak of his five public lectures and possibly many classes in Brooklyn during this period.* Nor were the conditions under which he worked always healthful. "I know the [New York class] lectures in those close rooms were very exhausting," Miss Hamlen would write on April 19, "and I do not like the Restaurant food for the Swami." (Landsberg had evidently won out, for a time at least, in respect to the cooking.) Indeed, Swamiji sorely needed "a little fresh air." "He worked continually and faithfully; ' Mrs. Bull wrote to Mary Hale in April, a few days after he had left town, "his lectures requiring on his part reading and careful thought " _x000d_ _x000d_ * For Swamiji’s Brooklyn lectures in the early part of 1895, see Prophetic Mission—2, chapter 13.

His teaching in class [she continued] was so clear and gentle in spirit that I felt it to be perhaps the best of all his work. It has served to call together earnest people among those who came to him, and I hope that a center of work for him in this country may be the permanent result of it all. He is tired now, but rest will soon make all the positive good apparent to him. The real character of the man and his work are now known too many and at any time [his work] may be resumed, as there are those who would always gladly welcome and assist him. . . . All who know him love the beauty of his life and he brings with him the realization of all good and noble endeavor Godward.

After relating how she and her sister started coming to Swamiji’s classes in late January, Miss MacLeod continued:_x000d_ I heard him all that winter, three days a week, and mornings at eleven o’clock. I never spoke to him, but as we were so regular in coming, two front seats were always kept for us in this sitting room of the Swamiji. One day he turned and said, “Are you sisters?” “Yes,” we answered. Then he said, “Do you come very far?” We said, “No, not very far about thirty miles up the Hudson.”* “So far? That is wonderful.” Those were the first words I ever spoke to him. _x000d_ * Dobbs Ferry, where Josephine MacLeod and Besse Sturges were living, was closer to twenty miles up The Hudson from New York than to thirty. But even (cont.) this was far to come.

They had kept their discovery of this godlike man a secret, telling no one where it was they went three mornings a week. “Don’t you recall how we hid Swamiji all that first few weeks even from Francey [Mr. Leggett]? Josephine MacLeod wrote years later to her niece Alberta. But Swamiji could not be hid for long.

MacLeod continues in her memoirs:_x000d_ We never spoke to [Swamiji], had nothing much to do with him; but during that spring we were dining one night [at the Waldorf, as she told it another time] with Mr. Francis H. Leggett, who later became my brother-in-law. “Yes, we can dine with you but we cannot spend the evening with you,” we had told him. “Very well,” he answered, “just dine with me.” When dinner was over, he said, “Where are you going this evening?” We told him we were going to a lecture; and he asked, “Mayn’t I come?” We said, “Yes.” He came, he listened; and when it was over, he went up to Swamiji, shook hands with him and said, “Swami, when will you dine with me?” And it was he who introduced us to Swami socially.

This must have occurred shortly before Mr. Leggett invited Swamiji to his country home, Ridgely, along with Miss MacLeod, Besse Sturges, and the latter’s two children alberta, eighteen, and Hollister, sixteen. Swamiji was to leave New York on April 11, but owing to a mix-up, his date of departure was postponed to the thirteenth. On the eleventh he had a class at the home of a Miss Andrews at 40 West Ninth Street. “As I was given to understand by Miss MacLeod that that class could be postponed, I was only too glad at the prospect of joining the company tomorrow,” he wrote to Mr. Leggett on April I 0. “But I find that Miss MacLeod was mistaken and Miss Andrews came to tell me that she could not by any means stop the class tomorrow or even give notice to the members, who are about 50 or 60 in number.”94 (this mention of a class at Miss Andrews’s, which must have been one of a series, is; at present, our only information about it.)

U.S.A_x000d_ 4th April 1895_x000d_ Dear Alasinga,_x000d_ Your letter just to hand. You need not be afraid of anybody's attempting to hurt me. So long as the Lord protects me I shall be impregnable. Your ideas of America are very hazy. . . . This is a huge country, the majority do not care much about religion. . . . Christianity holds its ground as a mere patriotism, and nothing more._x000d_ . . . Now my son, do not lose courage. . . . Send me the Vedanta-Sutras and the Bhashyas (commentaries) of all the sects. . . . I am in His hands. What is the use of going back to India? India cannot further my ideas. This country takes kindly to my ideas. I will go back when I get the Command. In the meanwhile, do you all gently and patiently work. If anybody attacks me, simply ignore his existence. . . . My idea is for you to start a Society where people could be taught the Vedas and the Vedanta, with the commentaries. Work on this line at present. . . . Know that every time you feel weak,_x000d_ you not only hurt yourself but also the Cause. Infinite faith and strength are the only conditions of success._x000d_ Be cheerful. . . . Hold on to your own idea. . . . Above all, never attempt to guide or rule others, or, as the Yankees say, "boss" others. Be the servant of all._x000d_ Ever yours with blessings,_x000d_ Vivekananda

SHE PLEADS FOR CHILD WIDOWS_x000d_ ___________x000d_ _x000d_ Mrs. James McKeen Replies to Dr. Janes_x000d_ ___________x000d_ _x000d_ Hindu Law Givers are Quoted_x000d_ A Suspicion that the Handsome Monk Vivekananda, _x000d_ Who Criticizes the Pundita Ramabai's Methods _x000d_ Has Hypnotized the Women of Boston_x000d_ _x000d_ The Position of Lecturer Sasipada Banerjee, _x000d_ Now in Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn Ethical society has issued a card of invitation to the public to attend a lecture to be given by Swami Vivekananda on Sunday evening, when a collection will be taken in behalf of the Hindu Widows' home, conducted by Babu Sasipada Banerjee, near Calcutta. This announcement revives the question of Swami Vivekananda's attitude toward the question of the treatment of child widows in India and the recent controversy, printed from time to time in the Eagle, between Mrs. James McKeen of this city and Dr. Janes of the Ethical society over the Pundita Ramabai and her teachings. Mrs. McKeen was seen yesterday at her home, 136 Henry street, and was asked whether there was any reply to Dr. Janes' last letter, printed in the Eagle. Mrs. McKeen, who is the manager of the Brooklyn Ramabai circle, said:

"If the whiff of controversy between Dr. Janes and myself shall result in a substantial contribution to this great charity I can only paraphrase the prayer book and exclaim: `The Lord has indeed granted us a happy issue out of all our troubles!' But it is difficult to understand why it was necessary to prelude all this with a declaration that the young widows of Hinduism were not ill treated by a settled custom of religious prejudice, as we maintain, and that `their property rights were superior to those guaranteed to widows in this country, giving them absolute control of their inheritance in their husbands' and patrimonial estates.' As to their property rights, the proof is abundant on every side that they have no rights of inheritance at all.

We have, in the first place, the laws of their great law giver, Manu, which are still enforced, and did not need to be increased in severity to suit degenerate times. In Manu v:147-156: `In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her son; a woman must never be independent.'

Again, Devendra N. Das, a Hindu, writing in the Nineteenth Century Magazine of September, 1886, tells us, quite in conformity with this law of Manu: `Among Hindus a woman cannot inherit any paternal property, and if a widow is left any property by her husband she cannot call it her own. All her wealth belongs to her son if she have any, and if she have none she is made to adopt an heir and give to him all her property directly he comes of age, and herself lives on a bare allowance granted by him. To a Hindu widow death is a thousand times more welcome than her miserable existence._x000d_ "Mr. James Wilson, a close friend and supporter of Mr. Banerjee, says of the `Widows' Home' in his `Female Education in Bengal' : `This is, perhaps, the boldest ex¬periment yet undertaken by Mr. Banerjee and can only be carried on by generous support. The widows themselves are not in a position to meet the expenses even of board and clothing.' In the annual report of the school itself for 1893 it said: `Considering the unfortunate position of widows in this country their case is one purely to call forth sympathy.' And the Indian Magazine of London, 1889, in recording a visit made to the school by the arch deacon of Calcutta, says: `Mr. and Mrs. Banerjee are stimulated by keen sympathy with the sad condition of so many young widows.' Again in Manu, v:157-158, we read: `Let the widow emaciate her body by living on pure flowers, roots and fruits. Until death let her be patient of hardships.' Why is it especially enjoined among the duties of a widow to `be patient of hardships' if there are none that belong especially to her position? In `Few notes on the Life and Work of Sasipada Banerjee' we find speaking of the Hindu widows they `with the spread of education and better ideas now feel it hard to continue subject to the austerities of a widow's life.'

"It seems to those who know well and have long known the unspeakable sufferings of a young and childless widow in India, as if we were trying to prove the existence of the sun in the firmament. It is a fact well known to all who are not willfully blind. There is a point in Dr. Janes' letter of March 3 that puzzles the understanding. He says: `Nor will the lofty and not altogether reprehensible pride of the Brahmin permit him to be the recipient of favors rendered possible by the solicitation of money in distant countries from those of an alien faith. To do this would be contrary to a deep seated religious and social prejudice which, whether we reprobate it or not is an unquestioned fact' How, then, does it come that a collection is to be taken up at a meeting of the Ethical society for the benefit of Mr. Banerjee's Home and School for Widows? Does Dr. Janes mean to imply that the Ethical society has been converted bodily to Hinduism by the eloquent monk and therefore have ceased to be a people of an `alien faith' from whom the `not reprehensible pride' of a Hindu forbids him to solicit aid? Some of the women in Boston declare that this handsome Hindu hypnotizes them and we may perhaps excuse the vagaries of our learned Ethical president upon the same ground, for surely nothing less than some such paralyzing power could betray so able a man from the paths of common sense. Our suspicion of hypnotism becomes further strengthened when we read in the same letter of March 3, `It is not the object aimed at by Ramabai that Swami Vivekananda criticizes, but the methods adopted for collecting money and the impossibility, as he believes, of accomplishing large results in the way proposed: And Swami Vivekananda is the friend `of Mr. Banerjee' and `believes in his work.' Must not Mr. Vivekananda therefore have used some occult means for concealing from the president of his recently converted society that Mr. and Mrs. Banerjee sailed for England the 18th of April, 1871, and when there traveled the length and breadth of the land establishing auxiliary societies in aid of female education in India? One striking result of this journey may be found in Mr. Banerjee's own words in reference to his home for widows, when he says: 'The widows' home could not have gained ground without the help and support of friends in England.' And since in speaking of Mr. Banerjee's faith he calls him a Hindu and commends him for having won the indorsement of many of the best citizens of his own faith-the inference is inevitable that he supposes Mr. Banerjee to be an orthodox Hindu._x000d_ "This puzzling question then comes to us to add to our bewilderment: How is it possible that Dr. Janes should not know that the honorary corresponding member of the Brooklyn Ethical association, Mr. Sasipada Banerjee, is just as much a heretic and outlaw to the orthodox Hindu as Ramabai herself? The hottest persecution Mr. Banerjee ever encountered was not when he first began befriending widows, nor when he established his girls' school, but when, in July, 1865, lie gave up idolatry and caste and threw off the sacred Brahminical thread. In the following August a meeting of orthodox Hindus was held `to take organized steps to persecute him.' Day and night meetings were held to put him and his wife to all sorts of inconven¬ience. Not a friend to help or a kind word from any quarter, Mr. Wilson on `Female Education in Bengal' [sic]. An Englishman's letter in the India Minor [Indian Mirror?] of that day says, `A sudden stop was now put to the progress of the school by the fact of the founder having embraced Brahmoism. For months no girl came to his school except his niece.'_x000d_ "But we are compelled to give up the whole mass of objection to Ramabai as incomprehensible when we read again in Dr. Janes' letter of March 3 that the work of Babu Sasipada Banerjee is commended because `It has been conducted quietly and without ostentation,' and the Pundita's is condemned because it has not been carried on quietly and without ostentation. Surely this good doctor must be under some malign influence. From every publication concerning the work of Mr. Banerjee comes the report of patronage from the very beginning of his schools, of lords and ladies, archdeacons and bishops presents from members of the royal family, letters of congratulation from the queen. That Mr. Banerjee has kept himself well informed as to every avenue of possible help we very well know who received applications of aid from him in almost the very beginning of Ramabai's enterprise. And far from condemning him, we approve his methods. Indeed, it was probably from his visit to England that Ramabai obtained the hint she so modestly followed here. The Bombay Educational Review, published by the government, says: What epithet we wonder should be applied to the journey to America of an unprotected Hindoo widow, to her loving reception by American ladies, to the formation of Ramabai circles, to the return of the wanderer to India and finally to the installation of the Sharada Sadana in a building of its own worth 45,000 rupees. Romantic is no word for it! It is gratifying to know that all that is best in native society is in hearty sympathy with the work of this gifted and brave Maratha lady.'_x000d_ "The Pundita Ramabai was a pupil and friend of Babu Keshub Chunder Sen. It was from books lent her by this great teacher that she first learned of Christianity. It was from him also that Mr. Banerjee first received his spiritual impulse. Chunder Sen was the founder of an eclectic theistic society, as much noted for its piety as the Neo¬Hindus, to whom Vivekananda belongs, are noted for what his admirers call ‘freedom of soul.’ I have searched in vain through several published accounts of the life and work of Mr. Banerjee, looking for some mention of Sanyasi monks among his friends and helpers. He men¬tions in great detail very many trifling acts of friendship as well as more substantial support. I have failed to find any allusion to Sanyasi monks, unless, indeed, they figure without name among the bands of orthodox who organized to persecute him when he joined the Brahmo Samaj. Indeed, the Unity and the Minister, the official organ of the Brahmo Samaj, the society to which Mr. Banerjee belongs, in Calcutta, goes so far as to say they know Babu Norendra Nath Dutt (alias Vivekananda), better as an actor on the stage of the Nava-Vrindavan theater than as a philosopher. The Ethical society publishes many extracts from Hindu papers commending their protégé, but they seem entirely to ignore the criticisms of other Indian periodicals of high standing. The Indian review ridicules the idea that Vivekananda should be supposed to be preaching Hinduism. It says his moral philosophy was taught him at a Christian college in Calcutta and the Unity and the Minister, from which we quoted above, goes on to say: `Any follower of modern Hinduism (referring to Vivekananda) cannot command that respect from us which we entertain for a genuine orthodox Hindu.'

Brooklyn Ethical Association. Pouch Gallery, 345 Clinton Ave. Free lecture by Swami Vivekananda, of India, Sunday evening April 7, at 8 o'clock. Subject "Some Customs of the Hindus: What They Mean and How They Are Misinterpreted." Collection for Babu Sasipada Banerjee's school for Hindu widows. All are cordially invited.

A special meeting of the Brooklyn Ethical Association, with an address by Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk, as the main feature, was held at the Pouch Gallery, on Clinton avenue, last night. "Some customs of the Hindus; what they mean, and how they are misinterpreted," was the subject treated. A large throng of people filled the spacious gallery._x000d_ Dressed in his Oriental costume, his eyes bright, and a flush mantling his face, Swami Vivekananda started to tell of his people, of his country, and its customs. He desired only that justice be shown to him and to his. In the beginning of his discourse he said he would give a general idea of India. He said it was not a country but a continent; that erroneous ideas had been promulgated by travellers who had never seen the country. He said that there were nine separate languages spoken and over 100 different dialects. He spoke severely of those who wrote about his country, and said their brains were addled by superstition, and that they had an idea that everyone outside of the pale of their own religion was a horrible blackguard. One of the customs that had often been misinterpreted was the brushing of the teeth by the Hindus. They never put hair or skin in their mouths, but use a plant. "Hence a man wrote," said the speaker, "that the Hindus get up early in the morning and swallow a plant." He said the [custom of widows throwing themselves under the] car of juggernaut did not exist, never had, and that no one knew how such a story started._x000d_ Swami Vivekananda's talk on caste was most comprehensive and interesting. He said it was not a granted [graded] system of classes, but that each caste thought itself to be superior to all the others. He said it was a trade guild and not a religious institution. He said that it had been in existence from time immemorial, and explained how at first only certain rights were hereditary, but how afterward the ties were bound closer, and intermarriage and eating and drinking were restricted to each caste._x000d_ The speaker told of the effect that the mere presence of a Christian or Mohammedan would have on a Hindu household. He said that it was veritable pollution for a white man to step into a Hindu's presence, and that after receiving one outside of his religion, the Hindu always took a bath._x000d_ The Hindu monk abused [?] the order of the Pariahs roundly, saying they did all the menial work, ate carrion and were the scavengers. He also said that the people who wrote books on India came only into contact with these people, and not with genuine Hindus. He described the trial of one who broke the rules of caste, and said that the only punishment inflicted was the refusal of the particular caste to intermarry or drink or eat with him or his children. All other ideas were erroneous._x000d_ In explaining the defects of caste, the speaker said that in preventing competition it produced stagnation, and completely blocked the progress of the people. He said that in taking away brutality it stopped social improvements. In checking competition it increased population. In its favor, he said, were the facts that it was the only ideal of equality and fraternity. That money had nothing to do with social standing in the caste. All were equal. He said that the fault of all the great reformers was that they thought caste was due only to religious representation, instead of ascribing it to the right source, namely, the curious social conditions. He spoke very bitterly of the attempts of the English and Mohammedans to civilize the country by the bayonet and fire and sword. He said that to abolish caste one must change the social conditions completely and destroy the entire economic system of the country. Better, he said, that the waves of the [Bay of] Bengal flow and drown all rather than this. English civilization was composed of the three "B's"--Bible, bayonet, and brandy. "That is civilization, and it has been carried to such an extent that the average income of a Hindu is 50 cents a month. Russia is outside, saying, 'Let's civilize a little,' and England goes on and on."_x000d_ The monk grew excited as he walked up and down, talking rapidly about the way the Hindus had been treated. He scored the foreign educated Hindus, and described their return to their native land, "full of champagne and new ideas". He said that child-marriage was bad, because the West said so, and that the mother-in-law could torture her daughter-in-law with impunity, as the son could not interfere. He said that the foreigners took every opportunity to abuse the heathen, because they had so many evils of their own that they wanted to cover them up. He said that each nation must work out its own salvation, and that no one else could solve its problems._x000d_ In speaking of India's benefactors he asked whether America had ever heard of David Herr [Hare], who established the first college for women, and who had devoted so much of his life to education._x000d_ The speaker gave a number of Indian proverbs that were not at all complimentary to the English. In closing he made an earnest appeal for his land. He said:_x000d_ "It matters not as long as India is true to herself and to her religion. But a blow has been struck at her heart by this awful godless West when she sends hypocrisy and atheism into her midst. Instead of sending bushels of abuses, carloads of vituperation and shiploads of condemnations, let an endless stream of love go forth. Let us all be men!"

Both the Standard Union and the Daily Eagle of April 8 reported on this lecture, in which Swamiji, striding up and down thc platform, "his eyes bright and a flush mantling his face," answered Mrs. McKeen and all his other opponents in his own way. The two reports read, respectively, as follows:_x000d_ _x000d_ THEIR CUSTOMS_x000d_ ___________x000d_ _x000d_ Swami Vivekananda Tells of Peculiarities of India_x000d_ __________x000d_ His Talk on Caste, Its Advantages and Defects, _x000d_ And of the Prospect of Its Total Extermination_x000d_ In the Immediate Future

Resolutions thanking the monk were unanimously adopted, and a collection was taken for the benefit of Babu Sasipada Banerjee's school for the education of Hindu widows at Baranagar.

So vociferous was the antagonism of the Ramabai Circles against the Swami and, more important to him, against India, that on April 7, 1895, he delivered an additional lecture at the Pouch Mansion in Brooklyn, entitled "Some Customs of the Hindus: What They Mean and How They Are Misinter-preted". To make it quite clear that he had nothing against the aid and education of India's child-widows, as such, the Swami's lecture was given free, with a collection taken for the benefit of Babu Sasipada Banerjee's school for Hindu widows; but the lecture was as clearly a reply to the defamers of his country. During its course, he spoke strongly in defence of India and thundered fearlessly at the West's thoughtless and often mali¬cious criticism of her religions and culture. At the close he cried: "It matters not as long as India is true to herself and to her religion. But a blow has been struck at her heart by this awful godless West when she sends hypocrisy and atheism into her midst. Instead of sending bushels of abuses, car-loads of vituperation and ship-loads of condemnations, let an endless stream of love go forth. Let us all be men!" Although the Swami did not directly retort to the women of the Ramabai Circle, this lecture seems to have effectively silenced them, for one finds no further protests from them in the Brooklyn press.

LET INDIA ALONE._x000d_ ___________x000d_ _x000d_ Then It will Come Out All Right, _x000d_ Says Swami Vivekananda_x000d_ _x000d_ The English people were given a raking over last night by Swami Vivekananda of India, who lectured to a throng at the Pouch mansion. He said that the English used three B's-Bible, brandy and bayonets-in civilizing India. The preacher went ahead with the Bible to get the lay of the fortifications. The English, he said, had exaggerated the social conditions of India in their writings. They got their ideas from the Pariahs, who were a sort of human scavenger. No self respecting Hindoo, he declared, would associate with an Englishman. The story about widows throwing themselves under the chariot of Juggernaut he declared to be a myth. Child marriage and caste he agreed were bad. Caste, he said, originated with the mechanics' guild:. What India needed was to be let alone, and it would come out all right.

Thus it was' (or thus it seemed) that on Tuesday, April 9, Swamiji's change of quarters and classroom to a, fashionable neighborhood was settled to everyone's satisfaction. But Swamiji was not bound by plane. The next day he announced that he was not moving to the Moores', that he was leaving town, that there would be no classes on the following Saturday. And on Saturday he left, to return, he thought, on Monday. "I am going away to the country tomorrow to see Mr. Leggett for a few days," he wrote to Mrs. Bull on Friday. "A little fresh air will do me good, I hope. I have given up the project of removing from this house just now, as it will be too expensive, and moreover it is not advisable to change just now. I am working it up slowly." It would seem clear from the rest of this letter that on Tuesday the ninth, walking down the Avenue with Swamiji, Miss Hamlen had talked too much. Indeed, she was to tell Mrs. Bull that she had made "many suggestions" to him before he went away "about seeing people." "The only `right sort of people' are those whom the Lord sends " he now thundered, "that is what I understand in my life's experience. They alone can and will help me. As for the rest, Lord help them in a mass and save me from them. . . . Truce to this `right sort of presentation.' Thou art my right, Thou my wrong, my Shiva.

New York_x000d_ 10th April, 1895_x000d_ Dear Friend {Mr. Leggett},_x000d_ It is impossible to express my gratitude for your kindly inviting me to your country seat. I am involved in a mistake now and find it impossible for me to come tomorrow. Tomorrow I have a class at Miss Andrews' of 40 W. 9th Street. As I was given to understand by Miss MacLeod that that class could be postponed, I was only too glad at the prospect of joining the company tomorrow. But I find that Miss MacLeod was mistaken and Miss Andrews came to tell me that she could not by any means stop the class tomorrow or even give notice to the members, who are about 50 or 60 in number._x000d_ In view of this I sincerely regret my inability and hope that Miss MacLeod and Mrs. Sturges will understand that it is an unavoidable circumstance, and not the will, that stands in the way of my taking advantage of your kind invitation._x000d_ I shall only be too glad to come day after tomorrow, or any other day this week, as it suits you._x000d_ Ever sincerely yours,_x000d_ Vivekananda

54 W. 33rd St., New York,_x000d_ 11th April, 1895_x000d_ Dear Mrs. Bull,_x000d_ . . . I am going away to the country tomorrow to see Mr. Leggett for a few days. A little fresh air will do me good, I hope._x000d_ I have given up the project of removing from this house just now, as it will be too expensive, and moreover it is not advisable to change just now. I am working it up slowly._x000d_ . . . I send you herewith the letter from H. H. the Maharaja of Khetri; also enclose the slip on Gurjun oil for leprosy. Miss Hamlin has been helping me a good deal. I am very grateful to her. She is very kind and, I hope, sincere. She wants me to be introduced to the "right kind of people". This is the second edition of the "Hold yourself steady" business, I am afraid. The only "right sort of people" are those whom the Lord sends--that is what I understand in my life's experience. They alone can and will help me. As for the rest, Lord help them in a mass and save me from them._x000d_ Every one of my friends thought it would end in nothing, this my getting up quarters all by myself, and that no ladies would ever come here . Miss Hamlin especially thought that "she" or "her right sort of people" were way up from such things as to go and listen to a man who lives by himself in a poor lodging. But the "right kind" came for all that, day and night, and she too. Lord! How hard it is for man to believe in Thee and Thy mercies! Shiva! Shiva! Where is the right kind and where is the bad, mother? It is all He ! In the tiger and in the lamb, in the saint and sinner all He ! In Him I have taken my refuge, body, soul, and Atman. Will He leave me now after carrying me in His arms all my life? Not a drop will be in the ocean, not a twig in the deepest forest, not a crumb in the house of the god of wealth, if the Lord is not merciful. Streams will be in the desert and the beggar will have plenty, if He wills it. He seeth the sparrow's fall. Are these but words, mother, or literal, actual life?_x000d_ Truce to this "right sort of presentation". Thou art my right, Thou my wrong, my Shiva. Lord, since a child I have taken refuge in Thee. Thou wilt be with me in the tropics or at the poles, on the tops of mountains or in the depth of oceans. My stay--my guide in life--my refuge--my friend--my teacher--my God--my real Self, Thou wilt never leave me, never . I know it for sure. Sometimes I become weak, being alone and struggling against odds, my God; and I think of human help. Save Thou me for ever from these weaknesses, and may I never, never seek for help from any being but Thee. If a man puts his trust in another good man, he is never betrayed, never forsaken. Wilt Thou forsake me, Father of all good, Thou who knowest that all my life I am Thy servant and Thine alone? Wilt Thou give me over to be played upon by others, or dragged down by evil?_x000d_ He will never leave me, I am sure, mother._x000d_ Your ever obedient son,_x000d_ Vivekananda

Such words show the Swami's spirit: bent on giving his message, bent on working for the world, not according to its terms but in his own light. In a letter to Mrs. Bull, he wrote on April 11, 1895:_x000d_ Miss Hamlin wants me to be introduced to the "right kind of people". This is the second edition of the "hold yourself steady" business, I am afraid. The only "right sort of people" are those whom the Lord sends—that is what I understand in my life's experience. They alone can and will help me. As for the rest, Lord bless them in a mass and save me from them! _x000d_ He went on to say that even though he lived in poor quarters, the right kind of people did come to him, even she who had criticized him. Then he launched into an eloquent appeal to Lord Shiva, in which he dedicated himself entirely to the will of the Lord, writing in anguish and burning love: "Lord, since a child I have taken refuge in Thee. Thou wilt be with me in the tropics or at the poles, on the tops of mountains or in the depth of oceans.…. Thou wilt never leave me, never.... And may I never, never seek for help from any being but Thee." And a few days later he writes, "The less help from man, the more from the Lord." And again, three days later. "It is the duty of a teacher always to turn out the 'right sort' from the most unrighteous sort of persons.... Through the mercy of Ramakrishna my instinct 'sizes up' almost infallibly a human face as soon as I see it. . . ."

U.S.A._x000d_ 11th April, 1895_x000d_ {original in Bengali}_x000d_ My Dear Shashi {Ramakrishnananda},_x000d_ . . . You write that you have recovered from your illness; but you must henceforth be very careful. Late dinners, or unwholesome food, or living in a stinking place may bring on a relapse, and make it hard to escape the clutches of malaria. First of all you should hire a small garden-house--you may get one for thirty or forty rupees. Secondly, see that cooking and drinking water be filtered--a bamboo filter of a big size will do. Water is the cause of all sorts of disease. It is not the clearness or dirtiness of water, but its being full of disease germs, that causes disease. Let the water be boiled and filtered. You must all pay attention to your health first. A cook, a servant, clean beds, and timely meals--these are absolutely necessary. Please see that all these suggestions be carried out in toto . . . . The success of your undertakings depends wholly upon your mutual love. There is no good in store so long as malice and jealousy and egotism will prevail. . . . Kali's pamphlet is very well written and has no exaggerations. Know that talking ill of others in private is a sin. You must wholly avoid it. Many things may occur to the mind, but it gradually makes a mountain of a molehill if you try to express them. Everything is ended if you forgive and forget. It is welcome news that Shri Ramakrishna's festival was celebrated with great eclat. You must try so that there is a muster of a hundred thousand people next year. Put your energies together to start a magazine. Shyness won't do any more. . . . He who has infinite patience and infinite energy at his back, will alone succeed. You must pay special attention to study. Do you understand? You must not huddle together too many fools. I shall be glad if you bring together a few real men. Why, I don't hear even a single one opening his lips. You distributed sweets at the festival, and there was singing by some parties, mostly idlers. True, but I don't hear what spiritual food you have given. So long as that nil admirari attitude is not gone, you will not be able to do anything, and none of you will have courage. Bullies are always cowards._x000d_ Take up everyone with sympathy, whether he believes in Shri Ramakrishna or not. If anybody comes to you for vain dispute, politely withdraw yourselves. . . . You must express your sympathy with people of all sects. When these cardinal virtues will be manifested in you, then only you will be able to work with great energy. Otherwise, mere taking the name of the Guru will not do. However, there is no doubt that this year's festival has been a great success, and you deserve special thanks for it; but you must push forward, do you see? What is Sharat doing? Never shall you be able to know anything if you persist in pleading ignorance. . . . We want something of a higher tone--that will appeal to the intellect of the learned. It won't do merely to get up musical parties and all that. Not only will this festival be his memorial, but also the central union of an intense propaganda of his doctrines. . . . All will come in good time. But at times I fret and stamp like a leashed hound. Onward and forward, my old watchword. I am doing well. No use going back to India in a hurry. Summon all your energies and set yourselves to work heart and soul; that will really be heroic._x000d_ Yours affectionately,_x000d_ Vivekananda