1719 Turk Street,
San Francisco,
1st April, 1900.
Dear Dhira Mata,
Your kind note came this morning. I am so happy to learn that all the New York friends are being cured by Mrs. Milton. She has been very unsuccessful, it seems, in Los Angeles, as all the people we introduced tell me. Some are in a worse state than before the skin paring. Kindly give Mrs. Milton my love; her rubbings used to do me good at the time at least. Poor Dr. Hiller! We send him over post-haste to Los Angeles to get his wife cured. You ought to have seen him the other morning and heard him too! Mrs. Hiller, it appears, is many times worse for all the rubbings given; and she is only a few bones; and, above all, the doctor had to spend 500 dollars in Los Angeles. That makes him feel very bad. I, of course, would not write this to Joe; she is happy in her dreams of having done so much good to poor sufferers. But oh, if she could hear the Los Angeles folks and this old Dr. Hiller, she would change her mind at once and learn wisdom from an old adage not to recommend medicine to any one. I am so glad I did not write of old Dr. Hiller’s alacrity in getting over to Los Angeles when he heard of this cure from Joe. She ought to have seen the old man dance about my room, with greater alacrity! 500 dollars was too much for the old man; he is a German; he dances about, slaps his pockets and says, “You can’th have goth the five hundred, buth for this silly cure!”
Then there are poor people who paid her three dollars a rubbing sometimes and now complimenting Joe and myself. Don’t tell this to Joe. You and she can afford to lose money on anyone. So also the old German doctor, but the poor boy finds it a bit hard. The old doctor is now persuaded that some devils are misarranging his affairs of late. He had counted on so much to have me as his guest, and his wife righted, but he had to run to Los Angeles and that upset the whole plan; and now, though he tries his best to get me in as his guest, I fight shy, not of him, but of his wife and sister-in-law. He is sure, “Devils must be in it”; he has been a Theosophical student. I told him to write to Miss MacLeod to hunt up a devil-driver somewhere so that he might run with his wife and spend another five hundred! Doing good is not always smooth!
As for me, I get the fun out of it–as long as Joe pays–bone-cracker, or skin-parer, or any system whatever. But this was not fair of Joe–after having got in all these people to get rubbed down, to run off and let me bear all the compliments! I am glad she is not introducing any outsiders to be skinned. Otherwise Joe would be gone to Paris, leaving poor Mr. Leggett to collect the compliments. I sent in a Christian Science healer to Dr. Hiller as a make-up of Joe’s misdemeanour, but his wife slammed the door in her face and would have nothing to do with queer healing.
Anyhow, I sincerely hope and pray Mrs. Leggett will be well this time. Did they analyse the sting?
I hope the will will arrive soon; I am a bit anxious about it. I expected to get a draft trust-deed also by this mail from India; no letters came, not even Awakened India, though I find Awakened India has reached San Francisco.
I read in the papers the other day of 500 deaths in one week of plague in Calcutta! Mother knows what is good.
So Mr. Leggett has got the V. Society up. Good.
How is Olea? Where is Margot? I wrote her a letter the other day to 21 W. 34, N.Y. I am so happy that she is making headway. With all love,
Ever your son,
Vivekananda.
PS. I am getting all the work I can do and more. I will make my passage, anyhow. Though they cannot pay me much, yet they pay some, and by constant work I will make enough to pay my way and have a few hundred in the pocket anyhow. So you needn’t be the least anxious about me.
V.