Swami Vivekananda

I have a message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East –
SWAMI VIVEKANANDA

PREFACE

When in the spring of 1950 I started looking through old newspapers in the New York, Brooklyn and Boston Public Libraries for articles about Swami Vivekananda, I had no idea that my search would lead to the writing of a book about the Swami’s life in America. I was living at the time in New York City, and a fellow member of The Vedanta Society of Northern California had suggested that I hunt for and have photostated whatever articles might find about the Swami. This seemed not only a useful but an absorbing occupation. It was, moreover, a rewarding one, for from time to time I came upon news reports not mentioned in the biographies of Swami Vivekananda and perhaps not previously known. Such discoveries seemed an end in themselves ; I did not look or see beyond them,

A year later, when I was still living in New York and still turning the yellowed pages of newspapers, a member of the Vedanta Society of Northern California had by chance learned that when Swami Vivekananda had visited Salem, Massachusetts, in the days before the Parliament of Religions he had left behind his trunk, his cane and his shawl at the home of a Mrs. Woods. As I have told in Chapter One of this book, I forthwith went to Salem and in the Essex Institute found that the Swami had not only visited the town but had lectured there more than once. The newspaper reports of those lectures constituted what may be called a “find”, for they pertained to a period of the Swami’s life in America which had heretofore been obscure. On making this discovery, two things became clear to me: one. that there was no doubt a great deal of material regarding the Swami in various libraries throughout the United States : and two. that such material should be searched for and, when found, made available to his devotees.

Thenceforth I set to work in earnest. New material began to pour in. Some came as a result of my efforts to unearth it, some came totally unsought, and all served to throw new light upon the Swami’s life from August. 1893, to April, 1895—a period of which we have had little detailed knowledge and with which this book is concerned. It was not,however,until the early part of 1955 that I was  able to present this material to the public through a series of articles in Prabuddha Bharata (March-September, 1955). But even during the writing of these articles new material continued to come into my hands, and it soon became evident that its presentation called not for a series of magazine articles (which gave signs of continuing indefinitely) but for a book. Thus, in the fall of 1955, five and a half years after my first search for Swami Vivekananda’s name in a New York newspaper, the present book was undertaken. (The seven Prabuddha Bharata articles with minor changes and the addition of more material constitute Chapters One to Five.)

Truly speaking, this book cannot be called a biography ; rather, it is, as it is intended to be, primarily a source book of the period it covers. First, my purpose in writing it was to present every scrap of new material that I had found or that, in one way or another, had been made available to me. A biographer necessarily selects his material, using it to highlight or to illustrate various aspects of his subject. I have made no such selection, for in sharing this new material with the Swami’s devotees I did not feel that I should take the responsibility of withholding any part of it. As a consequence, I have included news articles that are sometimes repetitious and sometimes of seeming insignificance. I believe, however, that the serious student of Swami Vivekananda will not find this lack of discrimination a fault, for to him everything regarding the Swami is of interest and of value. The second reason this book cannot be called a biography is that, with the exception of the first section of Chapter Thirteen, in which I have made free use of known material, I have avoided the inclusion of facts about and contemporaneous evaluations of Swami Vivekananda which are already known. My narrative, therefore, is not complete or exhaustive, as a biography should be. I have, for instance, given only slight attention to the fact that throughout this period the Swami was organizing and guiding his Indian work through a voluminous correspondence.

But although I have endeavored to restrict myself to the presentation of new discoveries, I must admit that in order to present them in their true light and significance I have placed them against the background of the Swami’s life and thought as well as against that of the times to which they pertain.When necessary, I have referred to some Known facts and have, to that extent, drawn upon published biographies, letters and memoirs. I nave also, in Chapter Two, made free use of the published histories of the Parliament of Religions—particularly “Neely’s History of the Parliament of Religions,” edited by Walter R. Houghton, and “The World’s Parliament of Religions’” by John H. Barrows—for without as detailed a picture as possible of this important episode in the Swami’s life in America, the significance of the material in the subsequent chapters would be obscure.

There are two more reasons for my having overstepped the bounds of a source book or a mere compilation of newspaper reports and other material. First, in some instances the available newspaper reports are not self-explanatory and, taken at their face value, put Swami Vivekananda in a somewhat false light. This is particularly true of the reports which relate to the controversies the Swami was forced to engage in while in America. I was faced with the choice of either suppressing this material and thereby suppressing important and revealing incidents in the Swami’s life, or of presenting it in conjunction with certain facts and explanations by the light of which it could be properly understood and evaluated. The second course was, I felt, owed to Swami Vivekananda, and in choosing it I have of necessity devoted several pages to explanatory passages (in, for instance, Chapter Eight, section IV and Chapter Twelve, section IV).

Second, in making a study of Swami Vivekananda’s life and thought in America, I found that certain theories regarding his American mission which had been held by his biographers and devotees were not supported by fact. New interpretations, based on new findings and also on a re-examination of the Swami’s published letters and other writings, seemed to be in order. I have, therefore, devoted four sections (Chapter Eight, section V : Chapter Thirteen, sections II, III and IV) to a detailed analysis of the Swami’s mission in the West.

In my endeavor to present the new material against its historical background, I have included a candid picture of Swami Vivekananda’s antagonists, the Christian missionaries of the 1890s. It is perhaps unfortunate that I have had to recount the disagreeable controversies of a past decade. But since this book was written in an effort to present as many facts about the Swami’s life in America as I was able to discover, I could not with good conscience onfit or suppress relevant history. It may also be said that the Swami’s attitude toward and conclusions regarding the activities of Christian missionaries in India can still prove helpful in solving a problem that remains, to say the least, troublesome. In fact, I believe that Swami Vivekananda’s approach not only to this particular problem but to India’s many other difficulties is still pertinent today and will continue to be pertinent for years to come. From what I have learned of current Indian thought, it appears that a number of modem Hindus consider the Swami’s views outmoded and no longer applicable to changed conditions and ideologies. But from what I have learned of Swami Vivekananda himself, it appears obvious that his counsel is still of vital relevance arid that, if I may be permitted to say so, the Indian people will neglect his teachings at their peril.

Since my narrative deals exclusively with the period extending from the Swami’s first arrival in America to the spring of 1895, I have included for the benefit of those readers who are unfamiliar with the full story of his life a Prologue and an Epilogue, which together give a brief resume of the years before and after those dealt with in the body of this book. To one who would make a thorough study of Swami Vivekananda’s early life in America, I recommend that in conjunction with this book he read the Swami’s early American lectures (particularly those delivered at the Parliament of Religions) in “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda” : Chapters XXI, XXII, XXIII and part of XXV of “ The Life of Swami Vivekananda”, by His Eastern and Western Disciples (fourth edition) ; and pages 65 to 226 of the fourth edition of “The Letters of Swami Vivekananda”, and additional Idlers in Volume VITI of “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda”. Throughout the course of this book I have referred to these works—all of which have been published by the Advaita Ashrama in Mayavati, Almora, India—as “The Complete Works”. “The Life” and “The Letters”.

In reproducing articles from American newspapers, I have given them exactly as they were in the original. Except for details of formal and obvious typographical errors, which I do not think need be perpetuated,wrong spellings of proper name and faulty punctuation and grammar have been left uncorrected. The misinformation of the American press regarding things Indian has also been allowed to stand ; for the original material gives glimpses not only of Swami Vivekananda but of the cultural climate which he encountered. In those cases, however, where journalistic errors make the material unintelligible I have given, when possible, bracketed suggestions as to what may have been intended by the reporter and, when this has not been possible, bracketed question marks to indicate the present author’s bewilderment. Although excerpts horn some of the newspaper reports have been quoted in “The Life of Swami Vivekananda” or in his “Complete Works”, the full text of every article has been included, except where otherwise indicated.

In quoting Swami Vivekananda’s newly discovered letters, poems and notes, I have nowhere taken the liberty of editing them, but have reproduced them in their entirety and have retained the original punctuations and sometimes hastily written sentences. While in some cases minor editing would not have been amiss, I believe that in at least one book his letters and other writings should be reproduced as he wrote them without omissions or changes. The reader will no doubt observe that quotations taken from “The Letters” vary at times from the published revisions. I these discrepancies, I assure him, are not due to my editing but to the fact that wherever possible I have taken quotations directly horn the transcriptions of the Swami’s original, unedited letters. Where the original has been in Bengali, I have sought and received the help of a translator, who has given me from the Bengali edition of “The Letters” a literal translation of several passages in which literalness was, I felt, of prime importance.

It should perhaps be mentioned that although this book is published in India by the Advaita Ashrama, whose policy is to follow English spellings, the American style of spelling has been used throughout, for not only is the author an American, but by far the greater pail of the quotations included in the book have been gathered from American sources. ‘The original spellings have, of course, been let stand in material taken from non-American sources.

Throughout the course of this book I have expressed my debt and my gratitude to those who have contributed their recollections of Swami Vivekananda and who have made available to me material to which I would otherwise have had no access. I would like, however, to express here my indebtedness and gratitude to the research workers in the libraries of many of those cities which Swami Vivekananda visited during his lecture tour, who in all instances have given me their courteous and indispensable assistance. My heartfelt thanks go particularly to my friend, John A. Gault of the New York Public Library, for the many photostats he contributed at his own expense and for his time, interest and help. My thanks also due to Mr. F. Kretzschmar of the Information Service, Inc. of Detroit for the articles his bureau unearthed for me in the Detroit newspapers. I am also indebted to all those who have generously supplied the photographs for this book, and I have acknowledged this debt in the List of Illustration.

Finally, to those members of the Vedanta Society of Northern California who have helped me in various ways in the preparation of this book—such as typing, reading, correcting my manuscript and preparing the glossary—and who have given me their untailing encouragement and their indispensable advice, my undoing gratitude.

In giving these thanks and making these acknowledgments, I do so not alone on my own behalf but on that of the Vedanta Society of Northern California, to which I have given the full rights to this book, including the rights of translation. I should add, however, that although the Vedanta Society of Northern California has accepted this book, the opinions expressed within its pages are mine and do not necessarily represent or rellect those of the Society.

In conclusion I would like to say that both the Vedanta Society of Northern California and I are indebted to the Advaita Ashrama for its offer to publish the present volume.

M. L. B.

 

I

Swami Vivekananda was born in Calcutta on January 12, 1863. His family, the Dattas of the Kayastha (Kshatriya) caste, was a wealthy and aristocratic one, long known for its charity, learning and spirit of independence. ‘The Swami’s father, Vishwanath Daita, was an attorney in the High Court of Calcutta, a position which, together with his inherited fortune, made it possible for his family to live in luxury. Out of his ample means Vishwanath gave to all who asked, supporting many of his relatives—worthy and unworthy alike. The Swami’s mother, Bhuvaneshwari Datta, was of an equally generous nature. She cheerfully managed the large household, composed not only of her five children but of her husband’s relatives, and somehow in the midst of her duties found time for the study of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, from both of which she could recite long passages and both of which she taught to her children. Thus Narendra Nath Datta, as Swami Vivekananda was known in his youth, was blessed with noble parents, even as they were blessed with a son whose influence was to usher in a new age.

Narendra as a child was, to say the least, difficult to manage. Impelled by a brilliant and energetic mind, he had a capacity of action and mischief that knew no limit. At times he would become uncontrollably restless, as though Lord Shiva, the Great God, the Absolute, to whom confinement was an outrage, dwelt in his small body. It is said thaL his mother’s only remedy for his turbulent outbursts was to pour a pitcher of cold water over the child’s dark head, repeating loudly the while the name of Shiva. At once Naren would grow calm and thoughtful, the clouds would disperse and soon his ordinarily joyful disposition would come to the fore. After such emergencies, Bhuvaneshwari Datta would sigh:    “I prayed to Shiva for a son, and He has sent inc one of His demons! ”

But tempestuous as he was, Naren from early childhood had a predilection for meditation. He would play at it, sitting in yoga posture, and often play-acting would pass into deep self-forgetfulness. The boy also had an innate fondness for wandering monks who would come to the house for alms, and to the despair of his parents he would regularly give them everything he could lay his hands on—bauble or heirloom. The device of locking Naren in his room whenever monks approached was of small avail, for from his window objects of all sorts would come showering down to the feet of the sadhus.

As a boy Narendra was the favorite of old and young alike and a leader among his contemporaries, who willingly deferred to his greater imagination and courage in the invention and execution of elaborate games and pranks. But as Naren grew older his unlimited energy began to turn more and more from wild and furious playing to the pursuit by day of intellectual activity and b) night of serious meditation, which came to him naturally and which brought spiritual visions to him, even in his early youth.

In 1877, when Naren was fourteen, his father found it necessary to move the family for a period of two years to Raipur in the Madhya Pradesh. In Raipur, where there was no school, Naren had time to spend long hours with his father, whose scholarship and openmindedness had led him, along with other Hindus, into a suspicion of his own cultural heritage and had bred within him an agnosticism typical of the age. Vishwanath gave careful attention to his son, naming his keen intellect and directing his attention to the study of WesLern culture and knowledge, which in that day was considered to be the very acme of learning.

When Narendra’s family returned to Calcutta in 1879, lie entered the Presidency College and, later, the General Assembly’s Institution, founded by the Scottish General Missionary Board. Never content with the offered curriculum, he read independently an untold number of books. IIis powers of reading and of retention were little short of miraculous. Al)lc to consume and digest a weighty tome in a short time, he never again forgot a detail of it, and as a result there were many branches of Western learning, as well as of Eastern, in which he became well versed. Indeed, he acquired during his college life a thorough knowledge of Western philosophy, history, art, literature, and a more than general knowledge of science and medicine.

But Naren’s concern was not with accumulating a fund of knowledge, but rather with discovering ultimate truth. A more shallow mind would have remained content with, or been frustrated by, the agnosticism to which Western philosophy and science pointed. Ilis thirst for a direct knowledge of reality, however, was profound and not to be put off by the well-acknowledged fact that it could not be acquired through the intellect or the senses. On the one hand, his spirit rebelled against the degrading philosophy of “I can’t know.” and on the other hand, it was impossible for him to accept on mere faith a doctrine that logic or his own experience could not verify. The icsult was mental torment and continual search.

During this period Narendra became a member of the Brahmo Samaj, a society which was at the time the spearhead of a reform movement among the Hindus. Its position was both modern and orthodox. While it advocated many social reforms and protested the old tenets of orihodox Hinduism, such as polytheism, image woiship- the doctrine of Divine Incarnations and the need of a guiu or spiritual teacher, it decried at the same time modern atheism and taught a belief in and worship of a monotheistic God, a formless God with attributes. In the doctrines of the Brahmo Samaj and also in one of its leaders, Kcshab Chandra Sen, young Bengal saw hope for a modernized Hinduism. With characteristic energy and enthusiasm, Naren identified himself with a branch of the Samaj led by Siva Nath Sastri and Vijay Krishna Goswami and heartily concurred in its attempts to sweep away the incrustations of the ages. He accepted the doctrine of a formless God with attributes, but unlike other Samajists. desired to see Him, as it were, face to face, for to him religion was of as little use as was intellectual learning if it did not bring him into direct contact with the very heart of reality.

Naren was now eighteen, well built, of startling attractiveness, strong and independent intellect and sparkling wit. He was an accomplished singer and a fascinating conversationalist whose moods could vary from the profound to the playful. Always.guided by a highly developed moral sense, he observed the inmost purity in his life—an effortless, innate purity which was never dampening. Indeed, wherever *Naren went he was the center of interest and gaiety and was loved and respected by all. It would have been a simple matter for him to reach the heights of worldly power and fame. Yet so restless was his spirit for an intimate knowledge of God that had he thought it necessary to renounce the world to attain it, he would gladly have done so. But how to know God? Was it possible to know Him? “Sir,” he asked Devendra Nath Tagore, who was looked upon as one of the best spiritual teachers of the time, “have you seen God?” Instead of answering, Devcndra Nath blessed him and said: “My boy, you have the yogi’s eyes.” Again and again Naren asked the question, putting it to the leaders of various religious sects in Calcutta, to pundits, to preachers who spoke of God, of salvation, of holiness. The answer, given truthfully, for the young questioner was so sincere, was always, in effect, “No.”

It was during this period of restless search for God that Naren, in November of 1881, first met Sri Ramakrishna in a house of one of the latter’s devotees, Surendra Nath Mitra. The Master, at once attracted to the young man, whose eyes seemed not on this world, and deeply moved by his singing, invited him to visit Dakshineswar.

II

The story of Swami Vivekananda’s life cannot be complete without the story of the life of Sri Ramakrishna, for the two lives formed, as it were, one whole. Yet, in this short account, only a little can be told about him. Sri Ramakrishna, born in 1836, is today held by thousands or more accurately, millions to have been an Incarnation of God who harmonized within himself all the spiritual thought and experience of the world’s past. Living quietly on the bank of the Ganga at the Dakshineswar temple, Sri Ramakrishna remained in an almost continuous state of God-consciousness, sometimes losing himself utterly in the Absolute Brahman, sometimes, in a slightly lower state, communing with the Personal God in one or another of His, or Her, infinite forms, sometimes, again, perceiving this world of multiplicity shot through and through with the unifying subbstance of Divinity. His power was that which only the Incarnations of God possess—the power of bestowing, by a touch or a glance, the vision of God and of removing by a wish the accumulated burden of karma from the souls of those who approach them. This power of forgiveness and of granting salvation, to speak in Christian terms, was part and parcel of Sri Ramakrishna’s nature. Childlike in the utter purity of his heart, he eagerly gave God-vision to pundit and illiterate peasant alike, granting his tremendous and liberating grace to all who came to him and were ready to receive it. To those who were not ready—for the sudden inflowing of God’s grace can shatter a small or flawed vessel—he gave the power of self-preparation and the assurance that it would in short time lead to spiritual fruition. The teachings of Sri Ramakrishna, who combined in himself a vast intellect and an unbounded compassion, who was, in fact, cosmic in mind and heart, were unique both in their all-inclusiveness and in their insistence upon the ability of man to know God directly and in this life.

The first part of Sri Ramakrishna’s life was spent in undergoing extreme austerities and engaging in a multiplicity of spiritual practices. There was no religious path which he did not quickly follow to its promised destination and none which he found invalid. Thus he became a living verification of the fact—new to the world—that all religions, if practiced earnestly, lead to the Godhead. He became also an unerring guide, for he was intimately acquainted with the landmarks and pitfalls of each spiritual road, and knowing at a glance the heart and mind of everyone who came to him, he was able to mold and quicken llie life of each along the line best suited to his nature.

The hist years of Sri Ramakrishna’s life, from the latter part of 1870 to August of 188fi, were spent in giving intensive training to a group of close disciples, who were later to become men of extraordinary spirituality and purity, apostles fit to transmit the teachings and power of their Master to the world.

It was around the end of 1881 that Narendra, in company with friends, first visited Dakshineswar and again met the Master. It was a momentous meeting and one that dumbfounded the young seeker of truth, for Sri Ramakrishna. instantly recognizing Naren’s inherent spiritual greatness, spoke to him in ecstatic, reverential terms, as though greeting a beloved, long absent god. Taking him aside, he poured forth his welcome: “Ah! you have come so late! How unkind of you to keep me waiting so long! My cars are almost seared listening to the cheap talk of worldly people. Oh, how I have been yearning to unburden tm mind to one who would understand my inmost feelings!” Telling of the incident at a later time, Naren said: “And so he went on raving and weeping. The next moment lie stood before me with folded palms and showing me the regard due to a god. said, ‘I know, Lord, you are that ancient Rishi Narayana in the form of Nara [Man] ; you have again incarnated yourself in order to remove the distress of mankind/ ”

Speechless, Naren regarded Sri Ramakrishna as stark mad. Vet after the Master had extorted from him a promise to return in a few days and had led him back to the group of devotees, there remained no trace of madness in his behavior. He spoke and acted normally: indeed, he radiated a sense of profound peace and spiritual joy. It was then that Naren asked his usual question:    “Sir, have You seen God?” The answer was given at once:    “Yes, I see Him just as I see you here, only in a much intenser sense. God can be realized : one can see and talk to Him as I am doing with you.” Naren, deeply impressed, felt that these extraordinary words came from the depths of an inner experience. They were not the words of a madman, nor were they the words of a mere preacher ; they were words that rang true and could not be doubted. He saw, moreover, that (he holy man’s life of utter renunciation was in perfect consonance with his teachings, that he was truly a great saint to be revered. Yet bow to reconcile this with the strange and extravagant greeting he had received? In a state of bafflement and confusion, Naren returned to Calcutta.

He could not erase from his mind, however, the feeling of blessedness that had come over him as lie had sat near the Master. Yet, busy with one thing and another, he did not return to Dakshineswar for nearly a month. During his second visit lie had an even stranger experience. After greeting him in his room and bidding him sit beside him, Sri Ramakrishna drew near him in an ecstatic mood and placed his right foot on his body. At this touch Naren saw, with eyes open, the walls, the robin, the temple garden, the whole world and even himself disappearing into a void. He felt that he was facing death and cried in consternation, “What are you doing to me? I have my parents! ”

The Master laughed and touched Naren’s chest, restoring him to his normal mood. “All right, let it rest now,” he said. “Everything will come in time.”

Versed in Western learning and by nature averse to the mysterious, Naren was convinced that Sri Ramakrishna had exerted a hypnotic influence over him. Yet the question remained how a madman could hypnotize so strong a mind as was his. Deeply perplexed, yet deeply attracted, he soon returned lor a third visit, determined to hold his own. but this time he fared no better. By a mere touch the Master again caused him to lose all outward consciousness. Referring to this incident, Sri Ramakrishna later said:
“ I put several questions to him while he was in that state. I asked him about his antecedents and where he lived, his mission in this world and the duration of his mortal life. He dived deep into himself and gave fitting answers to my questions. They only confirmed what I had scon and inferred about him. Those things shall be a secret, but I came to know that he was a sage who had attained perfection, a past master in meditation, and that the day he knew who he really was. lie would give up the body, by an act of will, through yoga.”

From first to last, Sri Ramakrishna could not praise Naren highly enough. He had not been speaking rhetorically when he had called him “Loid—the incarnation of Narayana.” His feeling for his young disciple bordered on reverence, so deeply aware was lit* of Naren’s godlike nature. Again and again lie spoke of him in ecstatic terms:    “Behold! Here is Naren. See! See!

Oh, what power of insight he has! It is like the shoreless sea of radiance! T he Mother, Maliamaya, Herself, cannot approach within ten feet of him! ” At another time he said:    “He has eighteen extraordinary powers, one or two of which are sufficient to make a man famous in the world.” Again. “He is a blazing, roaring fire consuming all impurities to ashes.”

Through all this, Naren remained dubious, thinking the Master to be blinded by tlic intensity of his love. His intellect, moreover, and the religious training he had received in the Brahmo Samaj forbade him to accept Sri Ramakrishna’s doctrines —the doctrine, for instance, of monism, which claimed that all was really Brahman, or God. From the point of view of the Brahmo Samaj this was blasphemy. Sri Ramakrishna’s belief in the living existence of innumerable forms of God and in their manifestation in images was equally blasphemous, if not downright superstitious. Even the Master’s visions and superconscious experiences were looked upon by Naren with the eye of the skeptic—not the shallow skeptic who disbelieves merely because he does not understand, but one who insists that truth be known with his whole being before he will accept it as valid. Naren could never abrogate his reason for the sake of finding comfort in an easy faith. Thus for more than four years he fought his Master, tom between the obvious genuineness of Sri Ramakrishna’s sainthood and his own refusal to accept as true anything that his experience did not verify.

Throughout those years Naren visited Dakshineswar often, drawn by his love for his guru. Those days spent at the feet of the Master in company with other disciples were golden ones. Sri Ramakrishna trained his boys with a light though unerringly sure touch. In times of laughter and play, in serious discussion, in moods of spiritual ecstasy, even in the everyday routine of eating and sleeping, he transformed life into a festival. The commonplace became extraordinary, and the slightest happening, a spiritual lesson. In so brief a sketch as this, little justice can be done to Narendra’s disciplesliip at Dakshineswar, and to the reader who is unfamiliar with the story one can only recommend that he turn to the biographies of Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda, particularly to Sri Ramakrishna the Great Master by Swami Saradananda and the Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna by M, for in those books he”will find a new and luminous dimension to this world—indeed he will find a new world altogether.

Gradually Narendra’s doubts disappeared. Engaging in arduous spiritual exercises under the careful eye of his guru, he proved by his own experience the truth of many of Sri Ramakrishna’s claims. At the same time his intellect expanded into what might be called, for lack of a better word, “super-intellect,” in the light of which many contradictions that had plagued him were resolved and many apparent fallacies were seen as higher truths.

But before Narendra surrendered completely to Sri Rama-krishna he was to undergo a bitter experience. In the early part of 1884 he passed his Bachelor of Arts examinations. Shortly thereafter, while he was spending the evening at the home of a friend, news came of the sudden death of his father from a heart attack. The shock was a severe one, for Naren had been deeply devoted to his father. But the full extent of the loss did not become apparent until several days later, when it was discovered that Vishwanath Datta, who all his life had freely given of his wealth to all who asked, had. left his family not only penniless but burdened with debt.

The following months were a nightmare. Naren, whose life had always been one of physical comfort, now found himself without funds and the sole support of his mother, two elder sisters, two younger brothers and sundry relatives. Creditors knocked at the door ; there was seldom enough to cat; clothes became threadbare, and, on top of all, a branch of the Datta family claimed part of the old mansion—the best part—as rightfully theirs. The claim was unfounded, but the case was brought to the law courts, where it dragged on and on. Although it was finally decided in favor of Naren’s family, it created in its course much unpleasantness, publicity and suspense.

In the meantime Naren sought everywhere for work. “Even before the period of mourning was over,’* he later told, “I had to knock about in search of a job. Starving and barefooted, I wandered from office to office under the scorching noonday sun with an application in hand, . . . everywhere the door was slammed in my face.” Those who had previously toadied to members of the Datta family now scorned them. As for Narendra’s true friends, few knew the state to which he had been reduced, for out of self-respect he said nothing. At first his faith in God’s mercy remained firm, but soon in the face of the misery of his own family, which made vivid to him the sufferings of helpless millions of his countrymen, his faith turned to doubt.

One evening toward the end of the summer, after the rains had begun, Naren was returning home from a day of fruitless job-hunting. Weak with hunger and unable to take a step farther, he sank down by the roadside. Perhaps he slept for a time; perhaps he only lapsed into a semiconscious state, but suddenly a change began to take place within him. Deep below the surface of his mind he felt that the veils of uncertainty and confusion were being removed one after the o:her. Theological problems, which were always more to him than mere intellectual puzzles, became automatically solved, and the meaning of the ways of God with man was clearly revealed. He knew also, with a sure knowledge that sprang from the depths of his being, that he must renounce the world.

Sri Ramakrishna, however, aware of all that had taken place within his disciple, asked him not to take up the life of a wandering monk for as long as he himself might live. It was not to be long. But during the year that remained of the life of the Master, Naren, after having provided for his family with the help of a fellow disciple, underwent innumerable spiritual practices. He quickly attained height after height of spiritual experience and reached at last the final goal of all spiritual endeavor:    the complete identification of the individual soul

with the Absolute Brahman. But he was not destined to remain immersed in that state.

“Now then,” the Master said to him after his attainment of monistic experience, “the Mother has shown you everything. Just as a treasure is locked up in a box, so will this realization you have just had be locked up, and the key shall remain with me. You have work to do. When you will have finished my work, the treasure-box will be unlocked agaim”

In the last few days of Sri Ramakrishna’s life he entrusted the care and training of his other disciples—themselves all hoys of profound spirituality—to Nsiren’s hands and imparted to him his final instructions. Then, aware that lie was to enter into Mahasamadhi—the last merging into the Absolute from which there is no return to the physical body—and that his days of teaching were over, he transmitted to this greatest of his apostles all the spiritual powers that he had acquired through years of austerity and experience. On August 16, 1886, Sri Ramakrishna passed away.

III

The grief of the young disciples, together with the pressure their families exerted upon them to return to their homes and live a “normal” life, might have disbanded them, had it not been for Narcmlra’s burning enthusiasm and determination to hold them together. Before long, one of Sri Ramakrishna’s householder devotees arranged to support the boys in a place of their own choosing. They chose a dilapidated and reputedly haunted two-story house in Baranagore, midway between Calcutta and Dakshineswar. The young apostles, informally initiated by Sri Ramakrishna into sannyasa, now took formal vows in the presence of one another, and the Sri Ramakrishna Order came into being. The story of Baranagore is the story of fifteen or so young men of total renunciation caught up in a fervor of spiritual longing. In dire poverty but eating nothing for sleep, food or proper clothing, the boys, led by Naren, spent hour upon hour in meditation, worship, study and devotional singing. The spirit of Sri Ramakrishna flowed through them as a constant and sustaining power, and through Naren they seemed again to hear his words and receive his guidance and inspiration.

The traditional ideal of monasticism in India is that the wandering monk who lives homeless and in complete reliance upon God. The monks of the Baranagore Math were torn between a desire for this life of utter freedom and a desire to hold together as the sons of Sri Ramakrishna. Now and then, one or another would leave the monastery for a month or two. Even Naren, restless for complete independence, made several solitary pilgrimages, only to return, drawn hack by his sense of responsibility to his brothers. But in 1888 he decided to break away lrom Baranagore, not only that his own strength and fearlessness might grow but that his brothers might also learn to stand alone.

The story of the next four years is that of Naren’s solitary wanderings throughout India. Several chapters of the Life of Swami Vivekananda by his Eastern and Western Disciples are devoted to his experiences during that time ; but even so, the story is somewhat disconnected and incomplete, for the Swami rarely spoke in any detail either of his inward spiritual experiences or of his outjvard trials and triumphs. Suffice it to say that, sometimes living in complete isolation and want, sometimes sharing the meals of humble villagers, sometimes being entertained by rajas and pundits, he strode over the length and breadth of his country, plumbing the life of the people to its depths. At the end of four years lie was able to say to his brother monk, Swami Turiyananda, whom he met at Mount Abu, “I don’t know what I have attained spiritually, nor do I care. I know only that my heart has expanded greatly, and I feel that if I could relieve the suffering of one soul by going to hell a hundred times, I would do it.”

At the southernmost tip of India, Cape Comorin, the Swami’s pilgrimage throughout his motherland culminated in a long and deep meditation, during the course of which, according to one of his brother monks to whom he confided the story, he had a profound and revealing spiritual experience. The actual content of this experience we do not know, but the Swami himself has told of his thoughts as he sat on a rock that jutted out into the ocean. He saw, as it were, the whole of India—her past, present and future, her centuries of greatness and also her centuries of degradation. He saw that it was not religion that was the cause of India’s downfall but, on the contrary, the fact that her true religion, the very life and breath of her individuality, was scarcely to be found, and he knew that her only hope was a restatement of the lost spiritual culture of the ancient rishis. His mind encompassing both the roots and the ramifications of India’s problem, and his heart suffering for his country’s downtrodden, poverty-stricken masses, he “hit,” as he later wrote, “upon a plan.”

“We are so many sannyasins wandering about and teaching the people metaphysics—it is afrmadness. Did not our Gurudeva use to say, ‘An empty stomach is no good for religion*? That those poor people are leading the life of brutes is simply due to ignorance. We have for all ages been sucking their blood and trampling them under foot.

“… Suppose some disinterested sannyasins, bent on doing good to others, go from village to village, disseminating education, and seeking in various ways to better the condition of all down to the Chandala, through oral teaching, and by means of maps, cameras, globes and such other accessories—can’t that bring forth good in time? All these plans I cannot write out in this short letter. The long and short of it is—if the mountain does not come to Mohammed, Mohammed must go to the mountain. The poor are too poor to come to schools, . . . and they will gain nothing by reading poetry and all that sort of thing. We as a nation have lost our individuality, and that is the cause of all mischief in India. We have to give back to the nation its lost individuality and raise the masses. The Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Christian, all have trampled them under foot. Again the force to raise them must come from inside, that is, from the orthodox Hindus. In every country the evils exist not with, but against religion. Religion therefore is not to blame, but men.

“To effect this, the first tiling we need is men, and the next is funds . . . . ”

This was, of course, a revolutionary idea of the function of a sannyasin in India and was to bring about the new type of monasticism that has since been established by the Ramakrishna Math and Mission.

As far as is known, it was in the early part of 1892 that the Svvami first heard of the Parliament of Religions, which was to be held in Chicago the following year. His friends and followers urged him to attend it and to represent Hinduism, offering to raise money for his fare and expenses. The Swami himself felt a deep urge to go to America, not so much to represent Hinduism as to obtain financial help and thus put his plan into operation. His final decision to undertake the trip, however, was not made until April of 1893 when, having prayed for guidance, he received, as he later told, “a Divine Command.’* Thus assured that the proposed journey was sanctioned by God, Swami Vivekananda. of whom Sri Ramakrishna had once said:    “The time will come when he will shake the world to its foundations through the strength of his intellectual and spiritual powers,” left behind all that was dear and familiar to him and, on May 31, 1893, set sail from Bombay for America. After stopping in China and Japan, he re-embarked at Yokohama. As far as can be learned, he crossed the Pacific on the SS. Empress of India, a 6.000-toii ship of the Canadian Pacific Line, which left Yokohama on July 14 and landed in Vancouver on the evening of Tuesday, July 25. From Vancouver he went by train to Winnipeg, Canada —the customary route in those days—and from there to Chicago, where, if he made no stopovers on the way, he very likely arrived on the evening of July 30.

I

Until now, the information we have had regarding the weeks between the midsummer of 1893. when Swami Vivekananda arrived in America, and the opening of the Parliament of Religions in September of the same year, has been scanty and derived largely from one or two letters which he wrote to India. In ‘”The Life of Swami Vivekananda” it is told that when he arrived in Chicago in late July to represent Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions he was not only totally unknown in America and unequipped with any kind of credential, but too late to register as a delegate to the Parliament even if he had credentials. ‘The Parliament of Religions, moreover, was not scheduled to open until September 11. Thus, even to attend it as a spectator Swamiji had several weeks to wait in a strange land where, as he writes in a letter to India, “The expense … is awful” In order to lessen this expense, he left Chicago for Boston where he had been told the cost of living was lower. “Mysterious,” write his biographers, “are the ways of the Lord! ” ; for it was on the train from Chicago to Boston that Swamiji met “an old lady” who invited him to live at her farm, called “Breezy Meadows,’’ in Massachusetts. It was through this providential woman, of whom we shall hear more later, that he met Professor John Henry Wright of Harvard. Professor Wright, at once appreciative of Swamiji.? genius, persuaded him, despite his reluctance to return to Chicago because of his meager funds, of the importance of attending the Parliament of Religions. Dr. Wright made all the necessary arrangements and introduced him as a superbly well-qualified delegate—one who, like the sun, had no need of credentials in order to shine. Indeed, had it not been for Dr. Wright’s insistence and help, it is doubtful that Swamiji would have attended the Parliament.

The little more that has been known regarding the pre-Parliament period of Swamiji’s life has been pieced together from the letter quoted above and dated August 20, 1893. We have known, for instance, that during his stay at “Breezy Meadows’ his hostess showed him off as “a curio from India” that he was gaped at for his “quaint dress,” that he was on this account going to buy Western clothes in Boston, that he was to speak at “a big ladies’ club . . . which is helping Ramabai,” and that he visited and was deeply impressed by a women’s reformatory. To these facts more now can be added, particularly in regard to the period between August 20 and September 8 , which until now has been virtually a blank.

Wherever Swamiji went he made news, and in my attempt to fill in the gaps in his life’s story I assumed that New England was no exception to this rule and that the papers of those towns which he visited in the pre-Parliament days would contain some mention of him. The nearest town to the farm “Breezy Meadows” is Metcalf, but upon making inquiries I found that Metcalf was too small to possess a newspaper. The town next in size is Holliston, still not large enough to support a paper of its own, and the next large is Framingham, a full-sized town, complete with newspaper office. It was to Framingham, therefore, that I went. In those days, the Framingham Tribune, which covered the noteworthy events of the surrounding country, was a weekly, coming out on Fridays. There being but few papers to look through, it was not difficult to find the following item which, small as it was and in spite of its quaintness, or perhaps because of it, had the impact of reality:

Friday, August 25, 1893

Holliston:    Miss Kate Sanborn, who has recently returned from the west, last week entertained the Indian Rajah, Swami Vivekananda. Behind a pair of horses furnished by liveryman F. W. Phipps, Miss Sanborn and the Rajah drove through town on Friday cn route for HunneweH’s.

What a sight that must have been! And who could help mistaking the young monk for a rajah as, in robe and turban, he was regally driven through the quiet New England village behind a pair of trotting horses, the mistress of “Breezy Meadows” at his side? This took place on Friday, August 18. On the following Sunday, Swamiji writes to India that he is going to Boston to buy Western clothes. “People gather by hundreds in the streets to sec me. So what I want is to dress myself in a long black coat, and keep a red robe and turban to wear when I lecture.”

From the above news item we learn for the first time that the name of Swamiji’s hostess was Miss Kate Sanborn. Miss Sanborn was, no doubt, taking her “curio from India” on a social call to Hunnewell’s, an estate some ten miles from “Breezy Meadows.” But, as Swamiji writes resignedly, “ … all this must be borne.” Indeed, it was through the sociability of Kate Sanborn and her pardonable delight in showing off her “Rajah” that Swamiji met Dr. Wright and subsequently the whole of America. Amiable, prominent and gregarious, Miss Sanborn was precisely the person to act as hostess to Swamiji in those early days, for she not only introduced him to Dr. Wright but was instrumental in providing him with a well-rounded preview of the American scene.

Further research regarding Miss Sanborn revealed that, aside from being an enthusiastic hostess, she was a lecturer and author, taking for her topics all the numerous facets of her active life— people, incidents, places. Although Swamiji referred to her as “an old lady.” she was, by American standards, not old when he first knew her. She was fifty-four and very energetic. She was possessed of a lively humor and a warm feeling for the human show, was keenly observant and widely known for her repartee. Even in her correspondence her wit was bubbling and irrepressible. It was her practice to include in her letters short and apt verses scribbled on cards. One of these, sent to a group of young women, advises:    “Though you’re bright / And though you’re pretty/They’ll not love you/If you’re witty.” A more serious and thoughtful side of her nature is revealed by another card which reads:    “Down with the fallacy enshrined in Senator Ingalls’ sonnet on the one opportunity. She comes, not alone in the gospel of the ‘second opportunity,’ but she is with you every day and hour waiting for recognition.”

Original1y from New Hampshire, Kate Sanborn had bought one of the old abandoned farms of Massachusetts and had proceeded to restore it into “Breezy Meadows”‘ Two of her books are devoted to her life on the farm, and it is from these that one learns of the scene that greeted Swamiji. She writes lovingly of the pines and silver birches, the huge elms growing near the house, the natural pond of waterlilies, and the two brooks where forget-me-nots grew along the shaded banks. The house itself was a rambling farmhouse with a vine growing over half the roof. There is a picture of it in one of her books: a friendly, comfortable house. There is also a picture of Kate Sanborn herself (older than when Swamiji knew her) standing in her front doorway offering a welcome to one and all. Today “Breezy Meadows” has changed ; part of the property is occupied by a seminary for Xavierian Fathers, and another part has been given over to a summer camp for Negro children. On this latter part of the farm the house where Swamiji made his first home in America still stands, not much altered, I have been told, by the passage of time.

II

In the letter that Swamiji wrote to India at this time, he mentions, as has already been noted, that he is to speak before a women’s club which was helping Ramabai. Ramabai, of whom we shall hear more in a later chapter, was a Hindu woman who had been converted to Christianity. In 1887-1889 she had been active in forming clubs in America for the purpose of raising funds for Indian child widows, whose plight she had graphically misrepresented. Unfortunately I could find no report in the Boston papers of Swamiji’s talk before the Boston Ramabai Circle. Nor was the 1893 Annual Report of that club more informative. But despite the meagerness of our information, we can at least be sure, in the light of subsequent developments in the Brooklyn Ramabai Circle which will be reported in a later chapter, that Swamiji gave the women of the Boston Ramabai Circle a true picture of India and of child widows and that it was a picture which they did not relish.

The first direct mention of Swamiji in the Boston papers is tucked away in the “Personal” column of the Evening Transcript of August 23, 1893:

Swami Vivekananda of India, a Brahmin monk who is on ids way to the parliament of religions to be held at Chicago in September, is the guest of Miss Kate Sanborn at her “abandoned farm” in Metcalf, Mass.

Last evening he addressed the inmates of the Sherbom Reformatory for Women upon the manners, customs and mode of living in his country.

Sherborn is a small town near “Breezy Meadows.” From Swamiji’s letter to India we know of the impression this reformatory made upon him. “It is the grandest thing I have seen in America,” he writes. Perhaps, when he spoke before them, the inmates thought that he was the grandest tiling they had seem in America. At any rale, it is safe to assume that I heir response was more sympathetic than that of the Ramabai club. And in some cases it may have been profound and trans-loaning. One cannot know, but the young Hindu monk, luminous in his red robe and yellow turban, must have been like a sunbuist in that grey prison, so startling that perhaps thiough him some saw the path to true freedom.

The next mention of Swamiji in the Boston papers is found in the “Personal” column of the Boston Evening Transcript of Friday, August 25, and reads as follows:

The Swami Vive Kananda of India, the Brahmin monk who was in this country for the purpose of attending the parliament of religions at Chicago next month, arrived in Boston yesterday, in company with Mr. F. B. Sanborn of Concord.

Mr. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn was a cousin of Kate Sanborn and was at first openly skeptical of her “Hindu saint.” He nonetheless paid a visit to meet Swamiji at “Breezy Meadows,” where his attitude at once underwent a change. He no doubt took keen delight in Swamiji’s company, and Swamiji in turn must have welcomed his. He was a well-known journalist, author and philanthropist, extremely active in organizing and promoting works of benevolence. He served as secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Charities—the first of its kind in America— and helped in founding many charitable institutions. He also founded the Concord Summer School of Philosophy and wrote biographies of his friends, Alcott, Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and others. As will be seen later, Mr. Sanborn invited Swamiji to speak at a convention of the American Social Science Association in Saratoga Springs, New York—the fashionable resort of the era.

But prior to going to Saratoga Springs, Swamiji passed a busy week and a half in Massachusetts. While he was spending Thursday, August 24, with Mr. Sanborn in Boston, Professor John Henry Wright, anxious to meet the phenomenal Hindu monk, of whom he had no doubt heard a great deal from the Sanborns, was on his way to Boston from Annisquam, a small resort village on the Atlantic seaboard. Through some misadventure, this meeting did not take place. Yet perhaps this was no misadventure at all, but the hand of Providence, for, not to be deprived of meeting Swamiji, Professor Wright invited him to spend the week-end at Annisquam. It was during this week-end that the professor formed the opinion of his guest that was to have such far-reaching consequences. A letter written by Mrs, Wright to her mother, which has recently come to light, tells of the occasion:

Annisquam, Mass. August 29,1893

My dear Mother:

We have been having a queer lime. Kate Sanborn had a Hindoo monk in tow as I believe I mentioned in my last letter. John went down to meet him in Boston and missing him, invited him up here. He came Friday! In a long safTron robe that caused universal amazement. He was a most gorgeous vision. He had a superb carriage of the head, was very handsome in an oriental way, about thirty years old in lime, ages in civilization. He stayed until Monday and was one of the most in-teresting people I have yet come across. We talked all day all night and began again with interest the next morning. The town was in a fume to see him; the boarders at MroriLine’s in wild excitement. They were in and out of the Lodge constantly and little Mrs. Merrill’s eyes were blazing and her cheeks red with excitement. Chiefly we talked religion. It was a kind of revival, I have not felt so wrought up for a long time myself! Then on Sunday John had him invited to speak in the church and they took up a collection for a Heathen college to be carried on on strictly heathen principles—whereupon I retired to my corner and laughed until I cried.

He is an educated gentleman, knows as much as anybody. Has been a monk since he was eighteen. Their vows are very much our vows, or rather the vows of a Christian monk. Only Poverty with them means poverty. They have no monastery, no property, they cannot even beg; but they sit and wait until alms are given them. Then they sit and teach people. For days they talk and dispute. He is wonderfully clever and clear in putting his arguments and laying his trains [of thoughts] to a conclusion. You can’t trip him up, nor get ahead of him.

I have a lot of notes I made as stuff for a possible story—at any rate as something very interesting for future reference. We may see hundreds of Hindoo monks in our lives—and we may not.

Aside from its importance in opening Swamiji’s way to the Parliament of Religions, this week-end lastingly enriched the Wright family.—as well it might have, for none fortunate enough to have Swamiji as a guest soon forgot him. The memory of this and later meetings—of which there will be more in a following chapter—became a part of the Wright family tradition, and Mr. John Wright, the son of Professor and Mrs. Wright, through whose kindness his mother’s letters and journals have been made available, today still speaks in the family idiom of “Our Swami,” though he was hut a child of two when Swamiji first came to Annisquam.

Mrs. Wright did indeed compose a story from her notes, a story which has been found among her papers. In regard to it, Mr. Wright tells us that “sometime in or after 1897, she prepared the account from the original notes, which have disappeared. She either typed it herself or had it typed by a stenographer and then thoroughly revised it in ink.” Mr. Wright’s deduction regarding the date of the manuscript is based on the fact that the typewriter on which it was written did not come into the family until 1897.

When we first received a copy of this manuscript, it seemed both familiar and new, and on comparing it with material in “The Life,” we found, to be sure, that some portions of it had  already been published. On pages 416-419 of the fourth edition, readers will find an article which is said to have come from a newspaper and which is a very much abridged version of the same story. Mr. Wright was not aware thaL his mother had contributed her article to a newspaper, and it is not known where or when it first appeared; but inasmuch as we are now in possession of the complete manuscript, this is of little importance. The unpublished portions comprise a good half of the original article and are, I believe, of absorbing interest, for they give an intimate picture of Swamiji from the pen of one who well understood that her subject was no ordinary person. But perhaps it is a picture that might alo prove shocking. Mrs. Wright has caught Swamiji in one of his bursts of fire, hard for some to reconcile with his calm, all-coin passionate, all-loving nature. Eire and compassion, however, are not disparate—indeed they often are as inseparable as the two sides of one coin. Swamiji’s heart, one never can forget, was lull of unhappiness for the suffering of his motherland, and correspondingly his mind was full of anger against all that contributed to her degradation. In the early days he ascribed a great deal of that degradation to the imperialism of the British, and it was only natural that he would lash out against a people who had ruthlessly crushed those whom he loved. It is well known that when Swamiji later met the English people on their home ground he became an ardent admirer of their many noble characteristics, but nonetheless he never changed his opinion one people by another. Swamiji was a thorough student of the world’s history, and whenever in the story of man’s life he found injustice and inhumanity he never hesitated to point them out in its uncertain terms.

However, here are the unpublished portions of Mrs. Wright’s article, for the sake of clarity and continuity I have here and there retained portions which have already been quoted in ‘ The Life,” and, for the same reason, I have omitted a word or phrase here and there and made a few minor corrections.

According to Mrs. Wright’s story, the Annisquam villagers and the boarders at the Lodge first caught sight of Swamiji as, in compare with Prolessor Wiight, In crossed the lawn between the boardinghouse and the professor’s cottage. So astonishing a sight did Swamiji present in this quiet little New England village that speculations set in at once as to who this majestic and cnloiful figure might be. From where had he come? What was his nationality? And so forth. The article continues as follows:

. . . Finally they decided that he was a Brahmin, and the theory was rudely shattered when that night, at supper, they saw him partake, wonderitigly, but cvidcnih with relish, of hash.

It was something that needed explanation and they unanimously repaired to the cottage after supper, to hear this strange new being discourse. . . .

“It was the other day,” he said, in his musical voice, “only just the other day—not more than four hundred years ago.” And then followed tales of cruelty and oppression, of a patient race and a suffering people, and of a judgment to come! “Ah. the English,” he said, “only just a little while ago they were savages. . . . the vermin crawled oil the ladies’ bodices. . . . and they scented themselves to disguise the abominable odor of their pel sons. . . . Most hor-r-ible! Even now. they are barelv emerging from barbarism.”

“Nonsense,” said one of his scandalized hearers, “that was at least five hundred years ago.”

“And did I not say ‘a little while ago’? What are a few hundred years when you look at the antiquity of the human soul?’ Then with a turn of tone, quite reasonable and gentle, “They are quite savage,” he said. “The frightful cold, the want and privation of their northern climate,” going on more quickly and warmly “has made them wild. They only think to kil

 

Where is their religion? They take the name ot ttiat Holy One, they claim to love their fellowmcn, they civilize—by Christianity!—No!    It is their hunger that has civilized them, not their God. The love of mau is on their lips, in their hearts there is nothing but evil and every violence. ‘I love you my brother, I love you!’ . . . and all the while they cut his throat Their hands are red with blood.”

. . . Then, going on more slowly, his beautiful voice deepening till it sounded like a bell, “But the judgment of God will fall upon them. ‘Vengeance is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord/ and dcstruction is coming. What are your Christians? Not one third of (he world. Look at those Chinese, millions of them. “They are (he vengeance of God that will light upon you. There will be another invasion of the Huns,” adding, with a little chuckle, “they will sweep over Europe, they will not leave one stone standing upon another. Men, women, children, all will go and the dark ages will come again.” His voice was indescribably sad and pitiful ; then suddenly and flippantly, dropping the seer, “Me,— I don’t care! The world will rise up better from it, but it is coming. The vengeance of God, it is coming soon.”

“Soon?” they all asked.

“It will not be a thousand years until it is done.”

They drew a breath of relief. It did not seem imminent.

“And God will have vengeance,” he went on. “You may not see it in religion, you may not see it in politics, but you must see it in history, and as it has been ; it will come to pass. If you grind down the people, you will suffer. We in India are suffering the vengeance of God. Look upon these things. They ground down those poor people for their own wealth, they heard not the voice of distress, they ate from gold and silver when the people cried for bread, and the Mohammedans came ipon them slaughtering and killing: slaughtering and laying they overran them. India has been conquered again and again for years, and last and worst of all came the Englishman. You look about India, what has the Hindoo left? Wonderful temples, everywhere. What has the Mohammedan left? Beautiful palaces. What lias the Englishman left? Nothing but mounds of broken brandy bottles! And God has had no mercy upon my people because they had no mercy. By their cruelty they degraded the populace, and when thc> needed them the common people had no strength to give for their aid. If man cannot believe in the Vengeance of God, he certainly cannot deny the Vengeance of History. And it will conic upon the English ; they have their heels on our necks, the} ha\e sucked the last drop of our blood for their own pleasures, they have carried away with ihem millions of our money, while our people have starved by villages and proxintes. And now the Chinaman is the vengeanc e that will fall upon them ; if the Chinese rose today and swept the English into the sea, as they well desewe, it would he no more than justice.”

And then, having said his say, the Swami was silent. A babble of thin-voiced chatter rose about him, to which he listened, apparently unheeding. Occasionally he cast his eye up to the roof and repealed softly. “Shiva! Shiva!” and the little company, shaken and disturbed by the current of powerful feelings and vindictive passion which seemed to be flowing like molten lava beneath the silent surface of this strange being, broke up, perturbed.

He stayed days [actually it was only a long weekend], . . . All through, his discourses abounded in picturesque illustrations and beautiful legends. . . .

One beautiful story he told was of a man whose wife reproached him with his troubles, reviled him because of the success of others, and recounted to him all his failures. “Is this what )our God has done for you”‘ she said to him, “after you have served Him so many years?” Then the man answered, “Am I a trader in religion? Look at that mountain. What does it do hr me, or what have I done for it? And yet I love it because I am so made that I love the beautiful. Thus I love God.” . . . There was another story he told of a king who offered a gift to a Rishi. The Rishi refused, but the king insisted and begged that he would come with him. When they came to the palace he heard the king praying, and the king begged for wealth, for power, for length of days from God. The Rishi listened, wondering, until at last lie picked up his mat and started away. Then the king opened his eyes from his prayers and saw him. “Why are you going?” he said. “You have not asked for your gift.” “I,” said the Rishi, “ask from a beggar?”

When someone suggested to him that Christianity was a saving power, he opened his great dark eves upon him and said, “If Christianity is a saving power in itself, why has it not saved the Ethiopians, the Abyssinians?” He also arraigned our own crimes, the horror of women on the stage, the frightful immorality in our streets, our drunkenness, our thieving, our political degeneracy, the murdering in our West, the lynching in our South, and we, remembering his own Thugs, were still too delicate to mention them. . . .

Often on Swamiji’s lips was the phrase, “They would not dare to do this to a monk.” … At times he even expressed a great longing that the English government would take him and shoot him. “It woidd he the first nail in their coffin,” he would say, with a little-gleam of his white teeth, “and my death would run through the land like wild fire.” . . .

His great heroine was the dreadful [?] Ranee of the Indian mutiny, who led her troops in person. Most of the old mutineers, he said, had become monks in order to hide themselves, and this accounted very well for the’ dangerous quality of the monks’ opinions. There was one man of them who had lost four sons and could speak of them with composure, but whenever he mentioned the Ranee he would weep, with tears streaming down his face. “That woman was a goddess,” he said, “a devi. When overcome, she fell on her sword and died like a man.” It was strange to hear the other side of the Indian mutiny, when you would never believe that there was another side to it, and to be assured that a Hindoo could not possibly kill a woman. It was probably the Mohammedans that killed the women at Delhi and Cawnporc. ‘These old mutineers would say to him, “Kill a woman! You know we could not do that” ; and so the Mohammedan was made responsible.

In quoting from the Upanishads his voice was most musical. He would quote a verse in Sanskrit, with iiiLonatious, and then translate it into beautiful English, of which he had a wonderful command. And in his mystical religion he seemed perfectly and unquestionably happs. . . .

It is interesting to compare the prophetic utterances Swamiji made in Antiisquam with those reported by Sister Christine in her “Reminiscences”:    “Sometimes he was in a prophetic mood, as on the day when lie startled us by saying:

‘ The next great upheaval which is to bring about a new epoch will come from Russia or China” And I have been reliably informed that at another time Swamiji made a statement to the effect that if and when the British should leave India there  would be a great danger of India’s being conquered by the Chinese. I mention these statements of Swamiji just in passing, and the reader may accept them in whatever spirit he likes.

Although this memorable and, as it turned out. histon-making week-end caused such a stir among the populace in Annisquam, the Gloucester Daily Times, which covered the Annisquam news, ran on August 28 the following item, tvpical of New England’s verbal economy:

Annisquam.

Mr. Sivanei Yiveksnanda, a Hindoo monk, gave a fine lecture in the church last evening on the customs and life in India.

But although this was all the newspaper had to say about Swamiji’s lecture on August 21 there are even today people to whom its main burden is still fresh and to whom Swamiji is still vivid. One woman, a summer resident of the village, writes to me in regard to Swamiji’s week-end in Annisquam:    “I consider it a great privilege to have known him. He was a striking looking man in appearance and dress. He wore a turban around his head and a long orange robe of heavy woolen [?] cloth with a wide purple sash. He had a charming voice. He began his lecture ill the Annisquam village church by saying that the Hindus were taught to have a great respect for other people s religions.”

On Monday, August 28, Swamiji left Annisquam for §alem, where he was scheduled to speak before the Thought and Work Club. The only information we have hitherto had of this lecture engagement is a bare reference in Swamiji’s “Breezy Meadows” letter. But his stay in Salem was more extended and active than this brief reference indicates. Recently we have been fortunate enough to find out more about it. The steps leading to this discovery are perhaps of interest.

III

In the spring of 1950, an advertisement in a magazine devoted to antiques was brought to the notice of a student of Vedanta. The advertisement, placed by a Mrs. Prince Woods, offered for sale a trunk and a walking stick which had belonged to Swami Vivekananda. Naturally enough, these articles were sent for, and a request was made for further information regarding them. A correspondence ensued between the Vedanta student and Mrs. Woods, in the course of which the following facts came to light.

In August, 1893, Swamiji had been invited by Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods to stay in her home at 166 North Street, Salem. He remained there a week, during which time he lectured in Salem, was criticized by the clergy (of which more later) and became beloved by Mrs. Woods and her son, Prince, a young medical student. At die end of his visit, Swamiji, intending to return, left behind him his staff and trunk and some other luggage. Of his return Mrs. Prince Wogds (the wife of Mrs. Woods’ son) writes:    “He spent two weeks at the Woods home stead at one time [actually it was one week] and came back from Chicago for another week [?] and to say ‘Farewell’. I did not know the family then, but he came with some friends in a carriage and a fine pair of horses just after I met my husband-to-be and was invited there. I just saw him as lie said ‘Goodbye.’ ” On leaving this second time, Mrs. Prince Woods tells in another letter, “lie gave his stall, his most precious possession, to Dr. Woods who was at that time a young medical student and the only child of Mrs. Woods. To her he gave his trunk and his blanket, saying to them, ‘Only my most precious possessions should I give to my friends who have made me at home in this great country.’ ” Mrs. Prince Woods adds, “This was a most gracious gesture after he had been feted all over the country,” and from this one may gather that Swamiji’s second visit to the Woods homestead occurred not immediately after the Parliament of Religions, but quite some time thereafter. The staff, trunk and blanket were cherished by the Woods family as mementos of a great soul and a great friend. Dr. Woods, his wife tells us, refused to sell them, “the British Museum offering $200 00 for it [the irunk] early in 1900. . . .” Thus, happily, all three in 1950 were still available. The blanket, which accompanied the trunk and canc, was actually a large, coarsely woven, dark orange shawl, the kind sometimes worn by wandering monks in India.

From the letters of her daughter-in-law we learn that Mrs Kate Tannatt Woods, who was fifty-eight when Swamiji was her guest, was, like Miss Kate Sanborn, an energetic .lecturer jmd authoress. “fShel died Tuly 10, 1910 . . . then 75 years of age, but very youthful m manner and looks, having lecture engagements all over the country. She went to Los Angeles and all over the West Coast not long before she passed on.” During her lifetime she wrote “many books,” among which were “Hester Hepworth” a story of the witchcraft itehttion, “A Fair Maid of Marblehead,” “Hidden for Years,” and so on. She also wrote and illustrated poetry. Some of her books were for children, toward whom she no doubt felt a special interest, for, during Swamiji’s visit, she ananged lor him to speak in her garden to a group of local children and young people.

This children’s afternoon was by no means due to an underestimation of Swamiji’s worth. The Woods family, as did all who came into contact with him, reverenced him. “ . . .I never saw the Swami,” Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods’ daughter-in-law writes (although, as seen above, she had once caught a glimpse of him), “but have felt that 1 knew him from the many things I have heard of him in the Woods family. My husband . . . spoke of him as . . . of a real Christian gentleman. I have heard that he and Mahatma Gandhi were more Christ-like than any the world has known.”

Those who had known Swamiji never tired of discussing him and pondering over the new and awakening ideas which he brought into their lives. Two years later Ella Wheeler Wilcox, the celebrated journalist and poet, who was a fiicnd of Mis. Woods, writes to her of Swamiji in words which were no doubt similar to those often spoken between them. Fortunately, these letters were among those which Mrs. Woods’ daughter-in-law had preserved, and although they relate to a time subsequent to the one dealt with in this present chapter, I will include them here as not only giving a new glimpse of Swamiji but also as shedding some light on his hostess to whom they were addressed.

May, [1895]

Dear Mrs. Woods:

Vivekananda is [at| 54 W. 33rd street.

I know it is Consecration to give out—I was born knowing that truth, but I think it is a great blot on the Consecration when we tell of it—and I am always ashamed after I have told of my own good deeds. Vivekananda says he meets many people who can not be led to talk of any subject that they do not drag in their own charitable acts, how they gave away a dime or helped some one in need. . . .

May, [1895]

Dear Mrs. Woods:

I was listening to Vivekananda this morning an hour. How honored b) 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—pci haps Christ. He is so simple—so sincere, so pure, so unselfish. To have listened to him all winter is the gieatest privilege life lias 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. Ilis 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 speak of what we have done—but to keep on working for the love of doing God’s work’—-is Vivekauanda’s grand philosophy of life. He always makes me feel ashamed that I have ever thought foi one moment I as burdened or that I ever spoke of any good act of my own. . . .

Welcome as was the in foi mat ion regarding Swamiji in Salem, it was incomplete, and in order to add to it a visit to that city was called for. North Street, Salem, wide arid shaded, is lined with old frame houses, most of which were standing in 1893. As I walked along looking for 166, I felt that this street, unlike those of larger cities, presented the same aspect that it had to Swamiji—more worn now. it is true, but substantially the same, quiet and comfortably settled into itself. Soon I came to 166, where Swamiji had stayed. It was a small two-story colonial house with a run-down garden at the side and back. Indeed, one could hardly call it a garden ; it was a yard with weeds growing in it. Put when Swamiji had spoken there, it most likely had been well kept. The house itself, flush with the sidewalk and devoid of the gingerbread of a later period, was in good repair, newly painted and probably but little different in appearance from what it had been when Swamiji left his trunk behind. The name on the front door, however, was not Woods. The Woods family, I learned, had moved awry years before, and the present occupant had never heard of a Hindu monk in Salem.

From 166 North Street I found my way to the Essex Institute, where the old Salem newspapers are filed away and where I looked for, found and copied the following articles from the Salem Evening News of August 24, 1893, and the Salem Evening News and Daily Gazelle of August 29. It would appear either that the same reporter served both the evening and morning-paper or that the evening paper lifted copy bodily from that of the morning. In any case, though repetitive, the three articles are given here respectively, along with their original headlines. Salem journalism in 1893 had its own peculiar charm:

SALEM EVENING NEWS August 24, 1893

A MONK FROM INDIA

He Will Visit Salem, Monday August 28 and Make an Address

On Monday next a learned monk from India will speak to the members of the Thought and Work Club, telling something of his land, its religion and customs. Club members will meet the rajah at Wesley chapel on North street promptly at four o’clock. Gentlemen and ladies who are not members can obtain tickets through some members of the club. The rajah will wear his native costume.

SALEM EVENING NEWS August 29, 1893

A MONK FROM INDIA

Salem Audience Interested in His Remarks

He has no faith in Missionaries

Explains the Bad Condition of Women in His Land

In spite of the warm weather of yesterday afternoon-a goodly number of members of the Thought and Work club, with guests, gathered in Wesley chapel to meet Swani Vive Kanonda, a Hindoo monk, now travelling in this country, and to listen to an informal address from that gentleman, principally upon the religion of the Hindoos as taught by their Vedar or sacred books. He also spoke of caste, as simply a social division and in no way dependent upon their religion.

The poverty of the majority of the masses was strongly dwelt upon. India with an area much smaller than the United States, contains twenty three hundred millions [sic] of people, and of these, three hundred millions [sic:| earn wages, averaging less than fifty cents per month. In some instances the people in whole districts of the country subsist for months and even jears. wholly upon flowers, produced by a certain tree which when boiled are edible.

In other districts the men eat rice only, the women and children must satisfy their hunger with the water in which the rice is cooked. A failure of the rice crop means famine. Half the people

LIVE UPON ONE MEAL A DAY the other half know not whence the next meal will come. Recording to Swani Vive Kyonda. the need of the people of India is not more religion, or a better one, but as he expresses it, “practicality” and it is with the hope of interesting the American people in this great need of the suffering, starving millions that he has come to this country.

He spoke at some length of the condition of his people and their religion. In course of his speech he was frequently and closely questioned by Dr. F. A. Gardner and Rev. S. F. Nobbs of the Central Baptist Church. lie said the missionaries had fine theories there and started in with good ideas, but had done nothing for the industrial condition of the people. He said Americans, instead of sending out missionaries to train them in religion, would better send some one out to give them industrial education.

Asked whether it was not a fact that Christians assisted the people of India in times of distress, and whether they did not assist in a practical way by training schools, the speaker replied that they did it sometimes, but really it was not to their credit for the law did not allow them to attempt to influence people at such times.

He explained the

BAD CONDITION OF WOMAN in India on the ground that Hindoo men had such respect for woman that it was thought best not to allow her out. The Hindoo women were held in such high esteem that the) were kept in seclusion. He explained the old custom of women being burned on the death of their husbands, on the ground that they loved them so that They could not live without the husband. They were one in marriage and must be otic in death.

He was asked about the worship of idols and the throwing themselves in front of the juggernaut car, and said one must not blame the Flindoo people for the car business, for it was the act of fanatics and mostly of lepers.

The speaker explained his mission in his country to be to organize monks for industrial purposes, that they might give the people the benefit of this industrial education and thus elevate them and improve their condition.

This afternoon Vive Kanonda will speak on the children of India to any children or young people who may be pleased to listen to him at 166 North street, Mrs. Woods kindly ollering her garden for that purpose. In person he is a fine looking man. dark hut comely, dressed in a long robe of a yellowish red color confined at the waist with a cord, and wearing on his head a vellow tin Iran. Being a monk he has no caste, and may eat and drink with anyone.

DAILY GAZETTE

August 29,1893

RAJAH SWAM VIVE KANAUDA

Has but Little Faith in the Missionaries Husbands of India Never Lie, Novel Persecute His Purpose Here to Organize Monks for Industrial Pin poses.

Rajah Swami Vivi Kananda of India was the guest of the Thought and Work Club of Salem yesterday afternoon in the Wesley c hurch.

A large number of ladies and gentlemen weie present and shook hands, American fashion, with the distinguished monk. He wore an orange colored gown, with led sash, yellow tmban, with the end hanging down on one side, which he used for a handkerchief, and congress shoes.

He spoke at some length of the condition of his people and their religion. In course of his spec h he was frequently and closely questioned by Dr. F. A. (Gardner and Rev. S. F. Nobbs of the Central Baptist church. He said the

MISSIONARIES HAD FINE THEORIES there and started in with good ideas, but had done nothing for the industrial condition of the people. He said Americans, instead of sending out missionaries to train them in religion, would better send someone out to give them industrial education.

Speaking at some length of the relations of men and women, he said the husbands of India never lied and never persecuted, and named several other sins They never committed.

Asked whether it was not a fact that Christians assisted the people of India in times of distress, and whether they did not assist in a practical way by training schools, the speaker replied that they did it sometimes, hut really it was not to their credit, lor the law did not allow them to attempt to inliuente people at such times.

He explained

THE BAD CONDITION of WOMEN in India on the ground that Hindoo men had such respect for woman that it was thought best not to allow her out. The Hindoo women were held in such high esteem that they were kept in seclusion. He explained the old custom of women being burned on the death of their husbands, on the ground that they loved them so lhaL they could not live without the husband. They were one in marriage and must be one in death.

He was asked about the worship of idols and the throwing themselves in front of the juggernaut car, and said one must not blame the Hindoo people for the car business, for it was the act of fanatics and mostly of lepers.

As For The Ideal of Idols he said he had asked Christians what they thought of when they prayed, and some said they thought of the church, others of G-O-D. Now his people thought of the images. For the poor people idols were necessary. He said that in ancient times, when their religion first began, women were distinguished fyr spiritual genius and great strength of mind. In spite of this, as he seemed to acknowledge, the women of the present day had degenerated. They thought of nothing but eating and drinking, gossip and scandal.

The speaker explained his mission in his country to be to organize monks for industrial purposes, that they might give the people the benefit of this industrial education and thus to elevate them and improve their condition.

Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, who had founded the Thought and Work Club in 1891, had evidently invited all the Salem clergy to hear Swamiji’s talk and to question him. But the above-mentioned Dr. F. A. Gardner and Rev. S. F. Nobbs of the Central Baptist Church, who “frequently and closely questioned” Swamiji, did so in no friendly spirit. This we learn from the letters of Mrs. Prince Woods, who writes:    “All the ministers were present and none of them appreciated what he said. Several were most critical.” And again: “I . . . remember that my mother-in-law . . . many times spoke of the outspoken, narrow attitude of most of the ministers in Salem who openly criticised him in the Pulpit. She had airanged an open meeting in one of the churches and most of the ministers openly accosted him in the most acrimonious manner while he remained gentle in speech and manner.” Presumably, this was Swamiji’s first encounter with the ministers in America, and while ther acrimony left him unperturbed he was no doubt surprised by it

He spent the following week -August 29 to September 4 at Mrs. Woods home. On Tuesday afternoon, August 29, he

spoke in the garden to the children, and on the evening of the following Sunday, September X, he lectured at the East Church, whosc minister was apparently one of the few who were sympathetic. The Salem Evening News of September 1 reported on the first of these events, the    Gazette of September 5 on the second. Both reports follow’, respectively.”

To SPEAK AGAIN
SWAMI VIVA KANANDA, The India Monk, at East Church Sunday Evening

The learned Monk from India who is spending a few’ days in this city, will speak in the East Church Sunday evening at 7-30. Swami (Rev.) Viva Kananda preached in the Episcopal church at Annisquam last Sunday evening, by invitation of the pastor and Professor Wright of Harvard, who has shown him great kindness.

On Monday night he leaves for Saratoga, where he will address the Social Science association. Later on he will speak before the Congress in Chicago. Like all men who are educated in the higher Universities of India, Viva Kananda speaks English easily and correctly. His simple talk to the children on Tuesday last concerning the games, schools, customs and manners of children in India was valuable and most interesting. His kind heart was touched by the statement of a little miss that her teacher had “licked her so hard that she almost broke her finger.” “We have no corporal punishment in our schools,” he said, “none at all.” As Viva Kananda, like all monks, must travel over his land preaching the religion of truth, chastity and the brotherhood of man, no great good could pass unnoticed, or terrible wrong escape his eyes. He is extremely generous to all persons of other faiths, and has only kind words for those who differ from him.

SOME SUNDAY SERVICES

Several Ministers Return to September Pulpits Rajah Rananda at the East Church

Rajah Swani Vivi Rananda of India spoke at the East church Sunday evening, on the religion of India and the poor of his native land. A good audience assembled, but it was not so large as the importance of the subject or the interesting speaker deserved. The monk was dressed in his native costume, and spoke about forty minutes. The great need of India today, which is not the India of fifty years ago, is, he said, missionaries to educate the people industrially and socially and not religiously. The Hindoos have all the religion they want, and the Hindoo religion is the most ancient in the world. The monk is a very pleasant speaker and held the close attention of his audience.

What a difference of feeling there is in these pre-Parlia-inent of Religions lectures from those that came after ! Through Swamiji’s letters and lectures one can trace his change of attitude through the months in his approach to the American public. He came with the purpose of getting help for India, of telling the American people of his country’s real needs and real genius, but he stayed only to give, pouring himself out for the sake of Americans, for he could not see hunger in any form, spiritual or physical, without tilling it.

Among the papers preserved by Mrs. Prince Woods were two letters written by Swamiji from Chicago a month or so after his first visit to Salem. Although these letters pertain to a later period, they belonged nevertheless to Mrs. Kate Tannatt Woods, and as completing the account of Swamiji’s stay at 166 North street they are quoted here:

Chicago, 10th October, 1893

Dear Mrs. Tannatt Woods:

I received your letter yesterday. Just now I am lecturing about Chicago—and am doing as I think very well—it is ranging from 30 to 80 dollars a lecture and just now I have been so well advertised in Chicago gratis by the Parliament of religions that it is not advisable to give up this field now. To which I am sure you will agree. However I may come soon to Boston 1>ut when I cannot say. Yesterday I returned from Streator where I got 87 dollars for a lecture. I have engagements every day this week. And hope more will come by the end of the week. My love to Mr. Woods and compliments to all our friends.

Yours truly, Vivekananda

(Letterhead)

George W. Hale,

541 Dearborn Avenue,

Chicago.    Nov. 19th 1893

Dear Mrs. Woods—

Excuse my delay in answering your letter. I do not know when I will be able to see you again. I am starting tomorrow for Madison and Minneapolis. The English gentleman you speak of is Dr. Momerie of London. He is a well known worker amongst the poor of London and is a very sweet man. You perhaps do not know that the English church was the only religious denomination in the world who did not send to us a representative and Dr. Momerie came to the parliament in spite of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s denouncing of the Parliament of religions.

My love for you, my kind friend, and your noble son is all the same whether I write pretty often or not.

Can you express my books and the cover-all to the care of Mr. Hale ? I am in need of them, the express will be paid here.

The Blessings of the Lord on you and yours.

Ever your friend, Vivekananda

P.S. If you have the occasion to write to Miss Sanborn and others of our friends in the east kindly give them my deepest respects.

Yours truly” Vivekananda

On August 30 Swamiji wrote to Professor Wright in regard to the invitation he had received from Mr. Franklin B. Sanborn to lecture before the American Social Science Association at Saratoga Springs. The following letters were found among Dr. Wright’s papers and, together with others that will be included in the course of this story, have been made available to us by his son, Mr. John K. Wright:

Salem

30th Aug ’93

Dear Adhyapakji (honorable professor)

I am going off from here today. I hope you have received some reply from Chicago. I have received an invitation with full directions from Mr. Sanborn. So I am going to Saratoga on Monday. My respects to your wife. And my love to Austin and all the children. You are a real Mahatma (a great soul) and Mrs. Wright is non parail.

Yours affly Vivekananda

On August 30 Swamiji evidently did not yet know the decision of the officials of the Parliament of Religions to whom Dr. Wright had written. But by September 2, as we see in the following letter, the arrangements were evidently well under way:

Saturday Salem (Sept. 2, 1893)

Dear Adhyapakji—

I hasten to tender my heartfelt gratitude to you for your letters of introduction. I have received a letter from Mr Theles of Chicago giving me the names of some of the delegates and other things about the Congress.

Your professor of Sanscrit in his note to Miss Sanborn mistakes me for Purushottama Joshi and states that there is a Sanskrit library in Boston the like of which can scarcely he met with in India. I would be so happy to see it.

Mr Sanborn has written to me to come over to Saratoga on Monday and I am going accordingly. I would stop then at a boarding house called Sanatorium.

If any news come from Chicago in the mean while I hope you will kindly send it over to the Sanatorium Saratoga.

You and your noble wife and sweet children have made an impression in mj brain which is simply indelible and I thought myself so much near to heaven when living with you. May He the giver of all gifts shower on vour head His choicest blessings.

Here are a few lines written as an attempt at poetry. Hoping your love will pardon this infliction.

Ever your friend Vivekananda

The poem which Swamiji “inflicted” upon Professor Wright and which heretofore has not been known was very likely the first poem he had w-ritten in the English language, and while it is b\ no means his best it contains, I believe, some of his most beautiful lines. To judge from the original, he dashed it off on letter paper in the flush of inspiration and, making only minor corrections here and there, sent it on to his friend. It is reproduced here just as he wrote it:

O’r Hill and dale and mountain range

In temple church and mosque 

In Vedas Bible A1 Koran 

I had searched for thee in vain 

Like a child in the wildest forest lost 

I have cried and cried alone 

Where art thou gone my God my love 

the echo answered gone

And days and nights and years then passed

A fire was in the brain I knew not when day changed in night 

The heart seemed rent in twain

I laid me down on Ganga’s-.shore

Exposed to sun and rain With burning tears I laid the dust 

And wailed with waters’ roar 

I called on all the holy names 

Of every clime and creed 

“Show me the way” in mercy ye 

Great ones who have reached the goal

Years then passed in bitter cry

each moment seemed an age

till one day midst my cries and groans

Some one seemed calling me

A gentle soft and soothing voice

that said “my son” “my son” 

That seemed to thrill in unison 

with all the chords of mv soul 

I stood on my feet and tried to find

the place the voice came from

I searched and searched and turned to see

round me before behind

Again Again it seemed to speak

the voice divine to me

In rapture all my soul was hushed

Entranced enthralled in bliss

A flash illumined all my soul the heart of my heart opened wide 

O joy O bliss what do I find 

My love my love you are here 

And you are here my love my all

And I was searching thee

From all eternity you were there 

Enthroned in majesty

From that day forth where ere I roam

I feel him standing by

O’er hill and dale high mount and vale

Far Far away and high

The moon’s soft light the stars so bright

The glorious orb of day

He shines in them His beauty might

reflected lights are they

The majestic morn the melting eve

The boundless billowy sea

In nature’s beauty songs of birds

J see through them it is He.

When dire calamity seizes me

The heart seems weak and faint 

All nature seems to crush me down 

ith laws that never bend

Meseems I hear Thee whispering sweet

My love, “I am near” “I am near”

My heart gets strong. With thee my love

A thousand deaths no fear

Thou speakest in the mother’s lay

that shuts the babies eye

When innocent children laugh and play

I see Thee standing by.

When holy friendship shakes the hand

He stands between them too 

He pours the nectar in mother’s kiss 

And the babies sweet “mama”

Thou wert my God with prophets old

All creeds do come from thee 

The Vedas Bible and Koran bold 

Sing thee in harmony

“Thou art” “Thou art” the Soul of souls

in the rushing stream of life 

“Om tat Sat om” Thou art my God 

my love I am thine I am thine.

* Tat Sat means that only real existence. [Swamiji’s note]

As has been seen, Swamiji left for Saratoga Springs on Monday night to speak before the convention of the American Social Science Association. Mr. Sanborn was at this time Secretary of the Association, which counted among its members eminent and cultured men from all professions, and he no doubt felt that he was offering them a rare treat in the person of Swamiji. Indeed, the fact that he invited a young, unknown Hindu monk to speak before so august an assembly is ample evidence that, like Professor Wright, he highly valued Swamiji’s intellectual genius. But although Swamiji spoke three times before the convention and twice at a private home, he characteristically never mentioned in his letters this honor paid to him during his first weeks in America. This omission was probably due to the fact that since the honor had been paid not to Hinduism nor to India but to himself he felt it was not worth mentioning.

The sessions of the American Social Science Association were of course wholly secular. One can get a general idea of their nature through the titles of some of the lectures that were given. Chosen at random, they were:    “Compulsory Arbitration”

“American Colleges and Their Work,” “The Educational Value of the Woman’s Paper,” “The Education of Epileptics,” “Turkey and Civilization,” “The Relative Values of the Factors that Produce Wealth,” “The Status of Silver,” “Recent Progress in Medicine and Surgery,” and so on. But Swamiji was prepared to speak on a variety of subjects, and in keeping with the tone of the convention, he chose for his topics:    “The Mohammedan Rule in India,” and “The Use of Silver in India.” The title of the third talk, given on the evening of September 6, is now unfortunately unknown, and, more unfortunately, the text of none of his talks was reported upon. Nevertheless, the newspaper articles which carried accounts of Swamiji’s appearances at the convention and at “Dr. Hamilton’s” are here reproduced in part. The first two excerpts are taken from the Daily Saratogian of September 6, 1893 ; the third, from the same paper of September 7:

THEIR SCIENCE IS SOCIAL

A Brainy Gathering Elects Its Officers

Able Papers Read at Yesterday’s Session—The Education of Epileptic—To Establish Social Science    Professorships—The    Program for

Today is Important.

The second session of the American Social Science association opened in the Court of Appeals room, Town Hall, yesterday morning. . . .

EVENING SESSION

The evening session opened at 8 o’clock, every scat in the room being occupied. The first business on the program was the election of officers. . . .

A paper was read by Hon. Oscar S. Strauss of New York on “Turkey and Civilization,” in which he most emphatically denied the general reports that Turkey was an uncivilized country.

The platform was next occupied by Vive Kananda, a Monk of Madras, Hindoostan, who preached throughout India. He is interested in social science and is an intelligent and interesting speaker. He spoke on Mohammedan rule in India.

The program for today embraces some very interesting topics, especially the paper on “Bimetallism,” by Col. Jacob Greene of Hartford. Vive Kananda will again speak, this time on the Use of Silver in India.

LOCAL GOSSIP

Swami Vive Kananda, an educated Hindoo who lately arrived in this country from India, is in attendance on the social science convention this week and has spoken twice to crowded parlors at Dr. Hamilton’s on the manners, customs and beliefs of the people of that wonderful country. He is an entertaining speaker, a highly educated man and his lectures, covering a wide range of topics, were very interesting. He is a striking figure in his oriental costume, and the public are invited to see and hear him at the Institute tonight at seven o’clock sharp. The lecture closes at 7:30.

MONEY WAS THE SUBJECT

Of the Able Paper at the Social Scientists’ Session

What President Andrews Said About the Monetary Experiment in India—Other interesting Papers—The Program for Today.

The second day’s session of the American Social Science association opened auspiciously yesterday morning, there being a large gathering.

The addresses and papers all pertained to finance which, especially at this time, proved very interesting. . . . Col. Jacob L. Greene of Hartford, read a paper on “Bimetallism”, treating the subject in a very exhaustive manner. A paper by Dr. Charles B. Spahr of ‘New York followed on the status of silver which was attentively listened to. A paper by President E. Benjamin Andrews of Brown University on “The Monetary experiment in India,” was .a masterpiece for thought and intellectual ability. . . .

At the conclusion of the reading Vive Kananda, the Hindoo monk addressed the audience in an intelligent and interesting manner, taking for his subject the use of silver in India.

Within three weeks Swamiji had, as far as we now know, given eleven lectures and gained the respect of some of the leading minds of America. He had, moreover, come into contact with a cross section of American life. He had spoken to the Ramabai Club ; he had met members of the clergy, the inmates of a prison, the American club woman, and had even talked with the children. He could not have had a better preparation for all that was to come.

Swamiji’s last talk before the opening of the Parliament of Religions was given in Saratoga on the evening of September 6. In the Saratogian there was an advertisement entitled “Half Rate to the World’s Fair,” which told of “The excellent Chicago train service on the Delaware and Hudson Railroad.” There was a train which left Albany at 4:30 pan. and arrived in Chicago at 7:55 the following evening. $26.50 round trip. It may well have been this train that Swamiji took on September 8. one way, for the Parliament of Religions, in which case he would have arrived in Chicago on the evening of the 9th, as is indicated in “The Life.” There is also the possibility that he returned to Salem on the 7th for his luggage and entrained for Chicago at Boston on the 8th. A third possibility is that he left from Albany on the 7th and arrived in Chicago a day earlier than has been reported. But in any case—whether he departed on the 7 th or the 8th—he left behind these quiet but important beginnings to step directly into the limelight that was never to let him go.

I

The primary purpose of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 was to bring together the fruits of man’s material progress. Everything imaginable was on exhibit—not only the achievements of Western civilization but, the better to show these off, life-size models of the more backward cultures of the world. The Fair, however, would not have been complete without a representation of the world’s thought. “Neely’s History of the Parliament of Religions,” edited by Walter B. Houghton, tells us that “the idea of a series of congresses for the consideration of the greatest themes in which mankind is interested, and so comprehensive as to include representatives from all parts of the earth originated with Charles Carroll Bonney in the summer of 1889.” Mr. Bonney was a well-known lawyer of that time. From 1890 he had held the position of president of the International Law and Order League and was the author of many important constitutional and economic reforms. His voice being one which was heard, his idea was given wide publicity and was met with general approval. A committee was formed, and on October 30, 1890, the World’s Congress Auxiliary of the Columbian Exposition was organized with Mr. Bonney as its president. For the next two and a half years elaborate and complex plans were made, involving an untold number of letters to and from all corners of the earth. The congresses which finally met between May 15 and October 28, 1893, were twenty in all and embraced such things as woman’s progress, the public press, medicine and surgery, temperance, commerce and finance, music, government and law reform, economic science, Sunday rest, and—“since faith in a Divine Power . . . has been like the sun, a light-giving and fructifying potency in man’s intellectual and moral devel.

Among the Councilors chosen from India were G. S. Iyer, Editor of the Hindu, B. B. Nagarkar of Bombay, and P. C. Mazoomdar of Calcutta, the last two of whom represented the Brahmo Samaj at the Parliament. The Committee was also in communication with Dhannapala, the General Secretary of the Maha-Bodhi Society in Calcutta, who later became the delegate for the Southern Buddhists of Ceylon, and Muni Atmaramji, High Priest of the Jain community of Bombay.

This abundance of correspondence was not all: articles, lectures, sermons and editorials were written which either extravagantly praised or bitterly condemned the attempt to bring together all the religions of the world. It was through articles in the Hindu by its editor, G. S. Iyer, that the plans of the Parliament were made generally known in India, and it is probably through this channel that Swamiji, not being affiliated with any sect or organization, came to learn of what was afoot in America.

The task of assembling this unprecedented gathering was not only cumbersome but delicate. The initial action of the Committee, which was appointed in the spring of 1891 and was formed largely of zealous Protestant ministers, was to advise religious leaders of the proposed objectives of the Parliament, which were in brief: ” 1) To bring together in conference, for the first time in history, the leading representatives of the great Historic Religions of the world. 2) To show to inen, in the most impressive way, what and how many important truths the various Religions hold and teach in common. … 4) To set forth, by those most competent to speak, what are deemed the important distinctive truths held and taught by each Religion, and by the various chief branches of Christendom.. 7) To inquire what light each Religion has afforded, or my afford, to the other Religions of the world. … 9) To discover, from competent men, what light Religion has to throw on the great problems of the present age, especially the important questions connected with Temperance, Labor, Education, Wealth and Poverty. 10) To bring the nations of the earth into a more friendly fellowship, in the hope of securing permanent international peace.”

At first the responses that flowed in were mostly favourable and enthusiastic. To be sure, a missionary of the Presbyterian Board in India expressed some “misgivings through fear lest the faith we loved and the Saviour we preached might seem to us to be dishonored.” But further acquaintance with the plans served to remove these misgivings and to bring about his hearty approval.

In what this further acquaintance consisted may be gathered from a quotation in Barrows’ book. “The Christian conviction back of this Parliament,” he writes approvingly, “was well expressed by Pere Hyacinth in the Contemporary for July, 1892: “It is not true that all religions are equally good ; but neither is it true that all religions except one are no good at all. The Christianity of the future, more just than that of the past, will assign to each its place in that work of evangelical preparation which the elder doctors of the church discern in heathenism itself and which is not yet completed.’

But this patronizing complacence was not enough to remove all misgivings, and as the plans became more widely known, dissent was soon loud and strong. Many Christian journals in America came out in decided opposition, largely on the same grounds that had given pause to the Presbyterian missionary, but also out of fear that the Parliament would only aggravate discord. The worst blow of all, however, was struck by the powerful Archbishop of Canterbury, who after due consideration finally wrote in a letter to the Committee: “. . . The difficulties which I myself feel are not questions of distance and convenience, but rest on the fact that the Christian religion is the one religion. I do not understand how that religion can be regarded as a member of a Parliament of Religions without

assuming the equality of the other intended members and the parity of their position and claims.”

Echoes were heard. For example, a letter from a minister in Hong Kong:    “. . . If misled yourself, at least do not mislead others nor jeopardize, I pray you, the precious life of your soul by playing fast and loose with the truth and coquetting with false religions. . . . You are unconsciously planning treason against Christ.”

Although the stand of the Archbishop and those like it were criticized by many, the opposition to them was for the most part based on the conviction that, after all, Christianity had nothing to fear. “In my judgment” wrote one bishop in America, “no Christian believer should hesitate one moment to make the presentation of the Religion of Jesus Christ grand and impressive, so that it may make itself felt powerfully in the comparison of religions. . . .” “Who can tell” he went on, “but that the great Head of the Church may, in his providence, make use of this immense gathering to usher in the triumph of his  truth, when at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow ?”

“One result” wrote another bishop, “will be to show that the Christian faith was never more widely or more intelligently believed in, or Jesus Christ more adoringly followed. Civilization, which is making the whole world one, is preparing the way for the reunion of all the world’s religions in their true center —Jesus Christ”

Dozens of similar letters followed in, approving of the Congress for evangelical reasons. Barrows, without the slightest consciousness that these letters were anything but in the spirit of the proposed objectives, added his own voice to them. He found it part of his work in replying to the criticisms of the Parliament to write articles and give many public addresses explaining the Christian and Scriptural grounds on which its defense, as he says, “securely rested,” namely, that St. Paul “was careful to find common ground for himself and his Greek auditors in Athens, before he preached to them Jesus and the resurrection.” “We believe,” Barrows went on to say. “that Christianity is to supplant all other religions, because it contains

all the truth there is in them and much besides, revealing a redeeming God.” Patronization was taken for enlightened brotherly love. “Though light has no fellowship with darkness, light does have fellowship with twilight. God has not left himself without witness, ami those who have the full light of the Cross should bear brotherly hearts toward all who grope in a dimmer illumination”

This was as liberal as the Christian ministry’ could get. There were of course letters and articles which expressed the thought of more open minds. But in Barrows’ history, these are in the minority and, significantly, almost all come from the pens of laymen. Representative is the following from Count Goblet d’Alviella, of Brussels:    “The significance of such an attempt cannot be too much insisted uppn. In opposition to sectarian points of view which identify Religion with the doctrines of one or another particular form of worship, it implies, 1. That religious sentiment possesses general forms and even a sphere of action independent of any particular theology ; 2. That men belonging to churches the most diverse can and should come to an understanding with each other in order to realize this program common to all religions.”

But views such as this, though they represented a large portion of public opinion, missed the main point as far as the General Committee was concerned. “The Parliament was conceived and carried on,” Barrows says, “in the spirit of Milton’s faith, that ‘though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously to misdoubt her strength. Let her and falsehood grapple; who ever knew Truth put to the worst in a free and open encounter?’ ” Truth, in this instance, was, of course, Christianity ; falsehood, every other faith.

While this sort of thing had the effect of allaying the fears of the more bigoted section of the Christian Church (though not those of the Archbishop of Canterbury), it also had the effect of repelling the leaders of other religions. It became necessary for Barrows hastily to assure certain alarmed foreign delegates that “the spirit of kindness and fraternity would prevail in the Parliament.”

The General Committee had many a ticklish problem on its hands, and there were some beyond its control At the last moment, for instance, in the summer of 1893, the Baptists and the Christian Endeavor Society withdrew all connections with the World’s Fair, the reason being that after long-drawn-out debates, the managers of the Fair had decided that its doors were to remain open on Sundays—a decision which was obviously the work of Satan. The Anglican churches for other reasons also withdrew. Russia refused to send a representative, as did Turkey.

But at length all plans were in order, and on August 11, 1893, the General Committee sent out a request for Universal Prayer . . to the advance of spiritual enlightenment, to the promotion of peace and good will among nations and races, and to the deepening and widening of the sense of universal human brotherhood.”

It must be said here that despite the obvious and strong prejudices of a large portion of the Christian ministry, and despite the rampant materialism of the age, thousands of men and women trustingly looked to the Parliament for the fulfilment of the first and broader objectives laid down by the Committee. There was in America a sincere and open-minded search for spiritual truth and an eagerness to welcome it wherever it might be found. But while a profound readiness existed in the American soul for spiritual food, a truly liberal attitude could not, in those days, obtain acceptance among the clergy or the public as a whole. Ironically, however, the Parliament, which could be convened only through a spirit of Christian evangelism, became in spite of itself an instrument for the destruction of bigotry.

II

The Parliament of Religions opened on the morning of September 11, 1893, at the Art Institute of Chicago, which is not to be confused with the “Art Palace”—a temporary though grandiose structure in the Fair Grounds. The Art Institute was a permanent and newly constructed building on Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, not yet ready to house the art exhibits for which it was intended. Except for the fact that its many large halls accommodated at various times all the congresses, it had no connection with the Fair, nor did it vanish into smoke as did the Exposition buildings; rather, it stands today, a large stone building of classical design, serving as one of America’s finest museums of art. It was in the Institute’s great Hall of Columbus that the delegates of the Parliament gathered on that memorable morning.

At ten o’clock, ten solemn strokes of the New Liberty Bell, on which was inscribed, “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another,” proclaimed the opening of the Congress—each stroke representing one of the ten chief religions, listed by President Bonney as Theism, Judaism, Mohammedanism. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, Shintoism, Zoroastrianism, Catholicism, the Greek Church, and Protestantism. It is not likely that any of the delegates heard this proclamation, for the bell was one of the curiosities of the Fair, and was located at a considerable distance from the Parliament. Nor did the bell serve to summon the spectators. A multitude of people had long since been besieging the doors of the Institute ; four thousand had crowded onto the floor and into the gallery of the Hall of Columbus and were waiting in an expectant silence for the delegates to appear. The hush was like that of a church. It is said that this “mass of people was so wonderfully quiet that the flutter of wings was heard when a tiny bird flew through an open window and over the vacant platform.”

There is no written description of this platform to be found, but to judge from pictures of the Parliament, it ran less than the full width of the auditorium and was about twelve feet deep. Empty of delegates, it must have presented a somewhat dreary and hodgepodge appearance. Against the back wall, upon which hung what appear to have been a Japanese and a Hebrew scroll, two giant marble statues of Greek philosophers brooded over the scene. Next to the philosopher on the right a comparatively small and sprightly bronze goddess—possibly the Goddess of Learning—lifted an encouraging hand. But the most extraordinary object was a thronelike chair, made, it is said, of iron, its high back intricately wrought. This chair was centered between the statues and, on this opening day, was reserved for Cardinal Gibbons, the highest prelate of the Catholic Church in America. On either side of the throne, about thirty ordinary wooden chairs stood three rows deep and awaited the delegates, the oflicials of the Parliament and invited guests. A speaker’s rostrum completed the scene.

Not on the opening day, but later, a sign was hung on the front of the rostrum, which read:    “No Admittance Except to Authorized Representatives of the Chicago Daily Press.” This admonition referred to the pit directly below, in which reporters and official stenographers sat at small tables and recorded the daily proceedings, and was no doubt made necessary by the curiotis and reverent crowds who pressed forward to reach the platform. Indeed, one of the now aged women members of the press (of whom there vrerc but one or two) told not long ago of how crowds used to rush forward to touch the hem of Swamiji s robe, and of how deeply she was impressed by his supreme and unbroken humility in the face of such adulation.

But to return to the vacant platform of the opening day, it had a makeshift air about it, as though someone had unsuccessfully attempted to convey the spirit of universality. It presented a conglomeration of unrelated things and was certainly not what one would call either harmonious or prepossessing. However, as the Reverend Barrows explained in another connection:    “It would have been unworthy of the moral dignity, the serious purpose of the occasion, if there had been any attempt at mere pageantry.”

Pageantry there was enough without a studied attempt at it. In another part of the building, the delegates, Swamiji among them, were preparing to make their appearance, forming in pairs to walk to the platform. At the appointed hour of ten the group started out. Heading the long procession came President Bonney and Cardinal Gibbons, arm in arm, the Cardinal resplendent in his crimson robes, the President somber and dignified in his morning coat. Following these two were the President and Vice-President of the Board of Lady Managers of the Exposition, Mrs. Potter Palmer and Mrs. Charles H. Hcnrotin, in silk dresses with puffed sleeves and bustles. The procession slowly and majestically entered the back of the auditorium, the crowd making way for it. Then beneath the flags of many nations and amid wave upon wave of cheers it marched down the center aisle and ascended the platform.

“The sight,” says Houghton, “was most remarkable. There were strange robes, turbans and tunics, crosses and crescents, flowing hair and tonsured heads.” Cardinal Gibbons sat in the center of the group on the iron throne. On his right were the five Buddhist priests of China in their long, flowing white robes, and on his left, the black-garbed patriarchs of the old Greek Church, “wearing strangely formed hats, somber cassocks of black, and leaning on ivory sticks carved with figures representing ancient rites.” The First Secretary of the Chinese Legation in Washington, who had been deputed by the Emperor of China to present the doctrine of Confucius, wore robes of a mandarin.

His pictures show him sitting bolt upright, squarely facing the audience with immense dignity and looking somewhat like a huge Chinese doll with a round and moonlike face. To quote again from Houghton: “The high priest of the state religion of Japan was arrayed in flowing robes, presenting the colors of the rainbow. Buddhist monks were attired in garments of white and yellow ; . . . the Greek Archbishop of Zante, from whose high head-gear there fell to the waist a black veil, was brilliant in purple robe and black cassock, and glittering as to his breast in chains of gold. Dharmapala, [‘whose slight, lithe person was swathed in pure white, while his black hair fell in curls upon his shoulders’] was recognized in his woolen garments; and in black clothes hardly to be distinguished from European dress, was Mazoomdar, author of the ‘Oriental Christ’.” The closing sentence of an eyewitness account by the Rev. Mr. Wente (from which the above bracketed quotation regarding Dharmapala is taken) is worth quoting here to complete the picture:“The ebon-hued but bright faces of Bishop Arnett, of the African Methodist Church, and of a young African prince, were relieved by the handsome costumes of the ladies of the company, while forming a somber background to all was the dark raiment of the Protestant delegates and invited guests.”

In the midst of this impressive ariay sat Swamiji, conspicuous, according to all accounts, for his “orange turban and robe,” or, as better put by the Rev. Mr. Weil re, for his “gorgeous red apparel, his bronze fate surmounted with a turban of yellow.” Ihis, then, was the scene on the platform. Facing it was the vast audience of men and women, filling every seat of the floor and gallery’ and comprising representative intellects of the day, both clerical and secular. “Such a scene,” writes Houghton, “was never witnessed before in the world’s history.” Swamiji later wrote, “My heart was fluttering and my tongue nearly dried up.” And it is little wonder, for he had suddenly found himself surrounded on all sides by solemn and august personages in full regalia, who represented the religious thought of the whole world. Although, as was told in the preceding chapter, he had spoken to small gatherings in America, never before had he seen, let alone* addressed, such a crowd as this.

Suddenly the great organ in the gallery burst forth with the strains of the “Doxology” and the entire assembly arose to sing: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow; Praise him, all creatures here below; Praise him above, ye heavenly hosts; Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost” There were more verses, and one can be sure that the hall resounded. At the end of the hymn a deep silence was sustained by the uplifted hand of the Cardinal. Then into this impressive hush he began the words of the Lord’s Prayer:    “Our Father who art in heaven .. ” and every voice in the hall joined with his. “The supreme moment of the nineteenth century” says Houghton, “was reached”

The Parliament of Religions had begun. Seventeen days of continual speech-making, morning, afternoon and evening, followed. Each session was attended by an audience that, big to start with, grew in volume as time went on until by the fourth day crowd became so great that it overflowed into the neighboring Hall of Washington, where the entire program was repeated word for word. On the fifth day, however, the Scientific Section of the Parliament was opened, and thenceforth the spectators were divided between the Parliament proper and this adjunct, in which the more erudite papers—those dealing with the science of religion—were read. As is known, Swamiji spoke at the Scientific Section on several occasipnj, and one cannot help wondering if the diversion of the crowd from the Hall of Columbus was not, in part at least, due to his presence rather than to the presentation of the science of religion.

One fortunate thing about the Parliament, which may be noted here, was that it was held in the early autumn, when the days were no longer stifling hot. With the exception of that overcrowded fourth day, when the temperature rose to 95°, and of a morning toward the end of the Parliament when it fell to 39°, the days, as far as temperature went, were mild. It was windy, however, and sometimes it rained. Indeed, such a storm blew one evening that rain was driven into the building, forcing many to protect themselves with umbrellas, and pounded on the roof with such a roar that often the speakers voices were drowned out.

The first day of the Parliament was devoted to speeches of welcome from the officials and responses by the delegates. There

were seven of the former, delivered in high oratory and consuming a large part of the morning session, which was concluded with eight short speeches of response. To some of the latter the audience was wildly demonstrative. The first delegate to speak was the Archbishop of Zante, representative of the Greek Church, who expressed the sentiment that “all men have a common Creator and consequently a common Father in God” and concluded with, “I raise up my hands and I bless with heartfelt love the great country and the happy, glorious people of the United States.” “This is indeed glorious!” cried President Bonncy, and the audience burst into prolonged cheering. Mazoomdar, the representative of the Brahmo Sainaj in Calcutta, who had been in America ten years before and was known to many, was also loudly cheered. But the expressions of welcome given to Pung Kwang Yu “were surpassed in the case of no other speaker on the platform,” says Barrows. “Men and women rose to their feet in the audience, and there was wild waving of hats and handkerchiefs.” This not because the audience was in sympathy with Confucianism, but because, as President Bonney had said in his introductory remarks, “We have not treated China very well in this country.”

To judge from a quotation from the St. Louis Observer of September 21, 1893, which reproduced in Barrows’ book, Dharma-pala, the Buddhist from Calcutta—whom Swamiji later spoke of as “a nice boy”—somewhat startled the public. “With his black, curly locks thrown back from his broad brow, his keen, clear eye fixed upon the audience, his long brown finger emphasizing the utterances of his vibrant voice, he looked the very image of a propagandist, and one trembled to know that such a figure stood at the head of the movement to consolidate all the disciples of Buddha and to spread ‘the light of Asia’ throughout the civilized world.”

Through all this, as is known, Swamiji remained seated, meditative and prayerful. It was not until the afternoon session, after four other delegates had read their prepared speeches, that he arose to address the Congress and, through it, the world. The electric effect on the audience of the first words Swamiji spoke is well known. Both Barrows and Houghton comment on the fact that “when Mr. Vivekananda addressed the audience as ‘Sisters and Brothers of America’ there arose a peal of applause that lasted for several minutes,” and Swamiji himself tells us that “a deafening applause of two minutes followed. . . Another reference to this incident comes from Mrs. S. K. Blodgett, who much later became Swamiji’s hostess in Los Angeles. “I was at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893,” she once told. ‘‘When that young man got up and said, ‘Sisters and Brothers of America’ seven [?] thousand people rose to their feet as a tribute to something they knew not what. When it was over I saw scores of women walking over the benches to get near him, and I said to myself, ‘Well, my lad, if you can resist that onslaught you are indeed a God!’” (It is told in “The Life” that the night following the opening day of the Parliament Swamiji, a guest at the time in a luxurious home, wept from the depths of his heart over the poverty and suffering of the Indian masses. This was his reaction to the fame and power that were suddenly his.)

As has been seen, however, the crowds had not sat glum and silent until he spoke: they had cheered a few others vociferously. As far as spiritual perceptiveness was concerned, this audience was an average one, its spiritual yearnings moving invisibly, even to itself, beneath layers of material tradition. This was not India, where greatness has but one meaning—spiritual greatness—and where, when it is seen it is understood. The audience of the Parliament, as a whole, could not have known, as Mrs. Blodgett says, precisely why it cheered for Swamiji at his very first words. In other cases there had been obvious reasons: political or religious sympathy, previous knowledge of the speaker, or atonement for national sin. In Swamiji’s case there was nothing like this, nor could the applause have been inspired by his words alone, for sentiments of universal brotherhood had been given voice throughout the whole morning and half the afternoon. Was it not, rather, inspired by something unspoken that came through Swamiji’s words? Bearing in mind that this was the first time he had addressed the great American public and that he himself was strongly moved by the occasion, one cannot but think that the deep powers of his nature were fully active as he stood there on the platform and that the knowledge of his spiritual identity with that huge crowd of men and women was paramount In his mind and vibrant in his voice, communicating itself irresistibly to those who saw and heard him. In short, it would not seem to be going beyond the realm of fact to say that the spontaneous and prolonged standing ovation that met Swamiji’s first words of greeting sprang from a source as deep as did those words themselves and that the rapport—the sense of unity—that was immediately created between himself and his audience betokened the real signiiicance of his visit to the West. This at least would seem to have been the case, though few at the time may have been aware of what force had so deeply stirred them.

Four talks followed Swamiji’s address before the opening day came to a close, making, throughout the morning and afternoon sessions, twenty-four talks in all. And now that the foreign delegates and the American people had greeted one another the serious business of the Parliament could begin.

III

There are several contemporaneous descriptions and appreciations of Swamiji quoted in “The Life” from various journals and periodicals such as the Boston Evening Transcript, the Rutherford American, the Interior Chicago and the Critic (called in “The Life” the New York Critique). Also one of the finest appraisals comes, as readers will remember, from the Hon. Mr. Mcrwin-Marie Snell, President of the Scientific Section. Swamiji’s devotees are familiar with these, but in the belief that they never tire of hearing of him from eyewitnesses, I think it will perhaps not be amiss, before continuing with the story of the Parliament, to give here a few word pictures of him that have not previously been known. Perhaps the most interesting of these comes from the pen of the well-known poetess, the late Harriet Monroe, who was for many years editor of Poetry, A Magazine of Verse, through whose pages she introduced many of America’s now famous poets. Miss Monroe attended the World’s Fair in 1893, and years later in her autobiography, “A Poet’s Life”, recorded her impressions of <he Parliament of Religions and of Swamiji:

The Congress of Religions was a triumph for all concerned,especially for its generalissimo, the Reverend John H. Barrows, of Chicago’s First Presbyterian Church, who had been preparing it for two years. When he brought down his gavel upon the “world’s first parliament of religions” a wave of breathless silence swept over the audience—it seemed a great moment in human history, prophetic of the promised new era of tolerance and peace. On the stage with him, at his left, was a black-coated array of bishops and ministers representing the various familiar Protestant sects and the Russian Orthodox and Roman Catholic Churches ; at his right a brilliant group of strangely costumed dignitaries from afar—a Confucian from China, a Jain from India, a theosophist from Allahabad, a white-robed Shinto priest and four Buddhists from Japan, and a monk of the orange robe from Bombay.

It was the last of these, Swami Vivekananda, the magnificent, who stole the whole show and captured the town. Others of the foreign groups spoke well —the Greek, the Russian, the Armenian, Mazoomdar of Calcutta, Dharmapala of Ceylon—leaning, some of these upon interpreters. Shibata, the Shinto, bowed his wired white headdress to the ground, spread his delicate hands in suave gestures, and uttered gravely with serene politeness his incomprehensible words. But the handsome monk in the orange robe gave us in perfect English a masterpiece. His personality, dominant, magnetic ; his voice, rich as a bronze bell ; the controlled fervor of his feeling; the beauty of his message to the Western world he was facing for the first time—these combined tcT give us a rare and perfect moment of supreme emotion, It was human eloquence at its highest pitch.

While it is gratifying to read descriptions from the pen of a poet, poets themselves are often beset with what is known as poetic melancholy at the evanescence of perfection. In this case it was a melancholy not justified. Miss Monroe goes on to add:

One cannot repeat a perfect moment—the futility of trying to has been almost a superstition with me. Thus I made no effort to hear Vivekananda speak again, during that autumn and winter when he was making converts by the score to his hope of uniting East and West in a world religion above the tumult of controversy. . . .

Another picture of Swamiji comes from the Chicago Advocate of September 28, 1893. The fact that the Advocate was not entirely favorable to Swamiji, as will be seen later, perhaps makes this description all the more valuable. Although this report refers to the second week of the Parliament, the description is no doubt also applicable to the opening day:

In certain respects the most fascinating personality was the Brahmin monk, Suami Vivakananda with his flowing orange robe, saffron turban, smooth-shaven, shapely, handsome face, large, dark subtle penetrating eye, and with the air of one being inly-pleased with the consciousness of being easily master of his situation.

His knowledge of English is as though it were his mother tongue. . . .

The correspondent of the Boston Evening Transcript found a way to meet the delegates of the Parliament behind the scenes, and it is to him that we owe a more intimate description of Swamiji. A sentence or two from his article published in the Transcript on September 30, 1893, has been quoted in “The Life” but I will nonetheless include the whole of it here:

THE HINDUS AT THE FAIR

Some Interesting Personalities at the Parliament of Religions . . . Plain Talk of Leading Heathens.

(Special Correspondence of the Transcript.)

Chicago, Sept. 23.

There is a room at the left of the entrance to the Art Palace marked “No. I—keep out.” To this the favorite at the parliament, from the grandeur of his sentiments and his appearance as well. If he merely crosses the platform he is applauded, and this marked approval of thousands he accepts in a childlike spirit of gratification, without a trace of conceit. It must be a strange experience too for this humble young Brahmin monk, this sudden transition from poverty and self-efTaccment to affluence and aggrandizement. When asked if he knew anything of those brothers in the Himalayas so firmly believed in by the Theosophists, he answered with the simple statement, “I have never met one of them” as much as to imply, “There may be such persons, but though I am at home in the Himalayas, I have yet to come across them.”

Aside from being able to give new’ word pictures of Swamiji, we are fortunate enough to have recently discovered one of the first likenesses of him in America—an unposed snapshot, taken, it can be reasonably assumed, in this room marked, “No. 1—keep out.” Perhaps it is not as clear as one would like all of his pictures to be, but it nonetheless belongs in Swamiji’s history and is reproduced in this book.

Readers of the “Letters of Swami Vivekananda” will remember that in a letter, dated November 2, 1893, Swamiji asked his disciple, Alasinga, for information regarding a Hindu boy. This request as it is given in the fourth English edition of the “Letters” reads: “A boy called-Acharya has cropped up in our midst. He has been loafing about the city for the last three years. Loafing or no loafing, I like him, but please write to me all about him, if you know anything. He knows you. He came in the year of the Psfltfs Exhibition to Europe.”

This “boy called -Acharya” is without question the same Narasimhacharya who is pictured in the photograph mentioned above peering intently over Swamiji’s shoulder. He was a “loafer,” but a loafer of undoubted charm and a good deal of intelligence and spirit. In answer to Swamiji’s request for information regarding him, Alasinga wrote a long biographical letter which told that Narasimhacharya was a prodigal son on whose account his mother had shed many tears. The letter followed Swamiji about from place to place in his later lecture tour and did not catch up with him until long after Narasimha-charya had been lost sight of. In the meantime Swamiji, on July 11, 1894, wrote again: “Why have you not written anything about Narasimha? He is practically starving here. I helped him a little, then he disappeared, I don’t know where, and he has not written to me anything” But then it can come as no surprise to those who know of Swamiji that, during the rushed days of the Parliament and afterward, he tried to take care of a charming wastrel who, somehow, one cannot imagine how, had become a delegate to the dignified Parliament of Religions.

Another new description of Swamiji comes from the pen of a Rev. W. H. Thomas. The Reverend Mr. Thomas did not speak at the Parliament, but was no doubt a member of the audience. In a letter published in the Wisconsin State Journal, November 18, 1893, he writes of Swamiji:

Of the many learned men in the East who took part in the great World’s Parliament of Religions, Vivekananda was the most popular favorite, and when it was known that he was to speak thousands were turned away for want of room. Nor was it curiosity alone that drew the masses; for those who heard him once were so impressed by the magnetism of his fine presence, the ( harm and power of his eloquence, liis perfect command of the English language and the deep interest in what he had to say, that they desired all the more to hear him again. It will be the opportunity of a life time for the cities of our land to sec and hear this noble, earnest, loving Brahman, dressed in the costume of his order, telling the true story of the religion and customs of his far-off country.

It can be noted here in passing that Swamiji came to be generally known, among other things, as a “Brahmin monk.” This was no doubt due to expediency on the part of the newspaper reporters, to whom, as to most Americans in that age, “a Brahmin” was synonymous with “a high caste Hindu who was a religious teacher.” It was a careless but forgivable error and one which Swamiji could no* have corrected. The term “Kshatriya,” the caste to which he belonged, would not only have conveyed nothing to the public, but would have been a bate noire to the press. “Brahmin” was bad enough. As a matter of fact, Swamiji acquired a sizable assortment of epithets during his stay in America, being known variously as the “Indian Rajah,” “The High Priest of Brahma,” “The Buddhist Priest,” “The-osophist,” and so on. Anything that conveyed the idea to the public that he was noble, religious and Indian sufficed for a headline. Later, however, Swamiji’s enemies made capital out of these casual and typically American errors, imputing to him a deliberate misrepresentation of his status.

A picture of Swamiji at the Parliament would not be complete without our telling something of his activities outside the plenary sessions, which by no means occupied his entire time. These days were strenuous ones for the delegates. Papers were delivered not only at the Parliament proper, but at side meetings. It is known, for instance, that Swamiji spoke at least four times, and perhaps eight, at the Scientific Section. Such talks were not simply given and over with: open discussions followed, the speakers being questioned at length. In this connection it is interesting to remember a footnote on page 199 of Volume VIII of “The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda.” The material is from the Chicago Daily Interocean of September 23, 1893:

In the Scientific Section yesterday morning Swami Vivekananda spoke on “Orthodox Hinduism.” Hall III was crowded to overflowing and hundreds of questions were asked by auditors and answered by the great Sannyasi with wonderful skill and lucidity. At the close of the session he was thronged with eager questioners who begged him to give a semi-public lecture somewhere on the subject of his religion. He said that he already had the project under consideration.

On page 200 of the same volume is a report of a lecture delivered on Sunday, September 24, 1893. at the Third Unitarian Church, which may have been the semipublic lecture that Swamiji had been requested to give.

The long hours of listening, of discussing, of lecturing were almost continuous. Moreover, the hospitality which the leading citizens of Chicago offered the delegates allowed them little rest. Enormous receptions were held after the close of many of the evening sessions, and smaller parties were given throughout the two weeks.

Along with the other foreign delegates, Swamiji was officially introduced to American society on the evening of the opening day of the Parliament at a huge reception held by the Reverend Mr. Barrows at the home of Mr. and Mrs. A. C. Bartlett—a great stone mansion, the rooms of which had been decorated with many hundreds of flags. On the second evening an even larger reception was given by President Bonney for all the delegates in the halls of the Art Institute. Thousands attended. On the following Thursday, the fourth evening, Mrs. Potter Palmer, President of the Lady Managers of the Fair and one of the most wealthy and influential social leaders of the Midwest, to whom Swamiji later referred as having been very kind to him in America, entertained the members of the Parliament at the Woman’s Building in the Exposition grounds. Here electric launches were provided (an innovation in those days) to carry the foreign delegates—probably Swamiji among them—through the Fair’s lagoons, that they might witness “the beautiful illuminations in the Court of Honor.” Edison’s newly perfected light bulbs, glowing magically and reflected in the dark waters, were no doubt a sight to behold.

At this reception of September 14 Swamiji gave a short talk on the condition of women in India! “It was Mrs. Palmer’s earnest wish,” writes Barrows, “to secure authoritative statements with regard to the condition of women in other lands, and appropriate addresses in response to her desires were made by the Archbishop of Zante, Hon. Pung Kwang Yu, Mr. Dharmapala, Mr. Mazoomdar, and Mr. Vivekananda.” Whether this talk was that which is quoted on page 198 in Volume VIII of “The Complete Works” is a puzzle which cannot be solved here, but it is not likely that a lecture given on September 14 would be reported in a paper of September 23, as was this published one. More likely, Swamiji spoke again on this subject on Friday, September 22,

More receptions fbr the delegates were held throughout the weeks by the leading citizens and ministers, and it is little wonder that Swamiji writes, “Many of the handsomest houses in this city are open to me,” for there could have been few of the Chicago gentry whom he had not met and charmed. Years later Prince Wolkonsky, a free-lance delegate from Russia, commented to Albert Spalding, the famous violinist, on Swamiji’s popularity. In Spalding’s autobiography, “Rise to Follow,” this excerpt can be found:

Wolkonsky was a delightful conversationalist. I found that he knew my country, having represented Russia in the Congress of Religions at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893. I asked him whether by any ChanceTieTiad met Swami Vivekananda there. Oh, yes, he had, and for some time afterward the two had maintained an active correspondence. But how was it that I came to speak of him? I was, after all, much too young to have remembered. … I explained that my family had been acquainted with the Swami and had often talked about him.

“He made a—what do you call it?—sensational ‘hit’ in your country,” said Wolkonsky, “especially with the Chicago ladies. Ah, those Chicago ladies! They seemed to take life—and incidentally themselves—very seriously.”

The Chicago ladies were, as were the women throughout America, asserting themselves in a new-found independence. It is precisely because they took life and themselves so seriously that they took Swamiji seriously, perhaps instinctively finding in him a symbol of the freedom and dignity which they knew to be their birthright and which they were indisputably winning for themselves. Missionary criticism later attributed Swamiji’s tremendous popularity among the American women to the brilliant color of his robe and turban!

Although the women, as a whole, may have given more expression than the men to their admiration of Swamiji—for the women were intent upon expressing themselves—men and women alike were drawn to him as to magnet. The descriptions we have of Swamiji at the Parliament of Religions show him as colorful and dynamic, dominating the scene with the force of his personality and the utter purity of his message. He was in the full vigor of his youth, ready to face the entire world and to sacrifice his life for “the poor, the ignorant, the oppressed” of his motherland. And there was yet another reason for his phenomenal popularity. Never before had the people of America seen one in whom spiritual truths had been fully realized. Though the fact that Swamiji was such a one was not consciously known by the thousands who flocked to hear him speak, who waited interminable hours for even a few words and who applauded when he simply crossed the platform, the people through some inner knowledge unerringly recognized him for what he was and, from start to finish, instinctively sensed that his very presence conferred a blessing. “Darshan” was unheard of in America, but here at the Parliament was a spontaneous and unconscious manifestation of the attraction of the human soul to the spiritually great.

This, then, is something of how Swamiji appeared to the Parliament. Let us now see how the Parliament appeared to him as it progressed through its seventeen days.

IV

For the most part each day was divided into three sessions lasting from two and a half to three hours each. At the opening of each morning session the presiding chairman—there was a different one each day—“invited the assembly, rising, to invoke, in silence, the blessing of God on the day’s proceedings; then, while the assembly remained standing, [a chosen member of the Parliament] led in ‘the Universal Prayer’ ‘Our Father which art in Heaven.’ ” Talks by the delegates were limited to half an hour apiece, but this ruling was at times relaxed, for the crowd had its favorites and would brook no interference with them. The jgreatest favorite, of course, was Swamiji; and the story is well known of how the attraction of the crowd to him, embarrassing as it may have been to some of the defenders of Christianity, was used to good advantage. From the Boston Evening Transcript, as quoted in “The Life” we know, for instance, that “the four thousand fanning people in the Hall of Columbus would sit smiling and expectant, waiting for an hour or two of other men’s speeches, to listen to Vivekananda for fifteen minutes.” In a letter to India Swamiji himself remarked upon this trick of saving the best until the last, and recently we have come across other accounts of the maneuver. One of these is given by Vircliand Gandhi, the Jain delegate, in the January 1895 issue of the Arena, an American periodical now defunct but once widely read, which described itself as “A Monthly Review of Social Advance”:

… at the Parliament of Religions … it was a fact that at least a third and sometimes two-thirds of the great audience of Columbus Hall would make a rush for the exits when a line orator from India had closed his speech. It was even a very noticeable fact that, long before the close of the great Parliament, some of my countrymen, made popular by the Parliament, were used as a drawing card to hold the great audiences, and in this way thousands were compelled to sit and listen to long, dry, prosy papers by Christians. They showed plainly that they were not interested, but there they sat enduring with much murmuring, expecting the next speaker might be one of the popular Orientals whose name was usually first on the bulletin board. . . .

The allusion no doubt included Swamiji, and the following account from the Northampton Daily Herald of April 11, 1894, leaves no question regarding ths matter:

… At the Parliament of Religions Vivekananda was not allowed to speak until the close of the programme, the purpose being to make the people stay until the end of the session. On a warm day when some prosy professor talked too long, and people would leave the hall by hundreds, it only needed the announcement that Vivekananda would give a short address before the benediction was pronounced to hold the vast audience intact, and thousands would wait for hours to hear a fifteen minutes talk from this remarkable man.

Officially the Parliament was not intended to be a controversy but rather a symposium of all the faiths of the world. The subjects presented were divided into two categories. The first comprised speculative and abstract topics, such as the nature of God, the nature of man, the importance of religion, revelation, the Divine Incarnation, immortality, and so forth. These and like subjects were discussed from the second to the tenth day. Then, the metaphysical doctrines of the various faiths having been made clear, the remaining seven days of the Parliament were devoted to papers bearing upon the second category of subjects, namely, the relation of religion to practical social problems, such as family life, the arts and sciences, the love of mankind, morals, Christian missionary methods, and so on.

During the first ten days of the Parliament every religion had its say. A paper by Manilal N. Dvivcdi gave a technical exposition of Hinduism and Indian philosophy. Dharmapala of the Maha-Bodhi Society in Calcutta defined Buddhism in all its aspects. Confucianism, Shintoism, Japanese Buddhism, Mohammedanism, Judaism, and many other religious doctrines were expounded and re-expounded. And of course, as we know, Swamiji in his “Paper on Hinduism” not only explained the teachings of his faith, but made them come alive as eternal truths pertinent to all men everywhere.

No doubt some members of the audience had come expecting to hear strange and weird beliefs regarding idolatry, blood sacrifice and polytheism ; for the popular conception, fed by missionary propaganda, was that the Oriental lands were rife with dark and unholy practices. But there can be no doubt that by the time the first half of the Parliament was over many hitherto fast-imbedded misconceptions regarding Eastern religions had been pried loose in the popular mind. Not only Swaniiji’s “Paper on Hinduism,” but other papers served to undermine the popular notions concerning, among other things, idolatry. The Review of Reviews, March 1894, in an article on Barrows’ book, “The World’s Parliament of Religions,” reflects the change of attitude that was brought about on at least this one point:

The book contains many pictures of idols such as one mostly finds in missionary literature. There they are intended to excite the horror and pity of the Christian reader. Here the attitude to idolatrous religions is avowedly sympathetic rather than critical; but one can scarcely escape a twinge of the old feeling at a sight of the fantastic objects of worship. Nevertheless, the popular Protestant notion of idolatry was emphatically repudiated by those who spoke in the name of image-worshippers.

In substantiation of this the article quotes briefly from the papers of Dvivcdi and of J. J. Modi, a Parsi of Bombay, and then goes on to quote at great length from Swamiji’s “noble address” the “Paper on Hinduism” Accompanying the article is a photograph of Swamiji in profile.

The change in the popular attitude toward Eastern religions was also reflected in other contemporary journals and periodicals. The Christian Herald of October 11, 1893, wrote:

From the Parliament of Religions which has just closed its sessions in Chicago two significant and important results have come. First we have learned from the addresses delivered by representatives of many religions, especially those of Asia, that the leaders of these faiths have generally the same aim as that of the Christian preacher. They are seeking in their way to eradicate sin and vice, to ennoble and purify the lives of men and to encourage kindness, charity and helpfulness. Thus, so far as morality is concerned, they are allies rather than opponents of Christianity.

The thing that strikes us with something of a shock today is that this was news! The Outlook of October 7, 1893, made an even more profound discovery:

The relations of the ethnic religions to Christianity are, in every phase of these meetings at Chicago, forced more and more into prominence, as the strong personalities of the men who represent Brahmanism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism, press themselves upon the listening thousands ; their seriousness, earnestness, devoutness, and spirituality, as they sit side by side with Greek, Anglican, German, and American Churchmen, precludes the thought that their religions are ancient shades which will fall or melt into mist as the triumphant light of Christianity shines through them. The representatives of the Hindu cults, in particular, are no men of straw, and through their eyes Christians have looked, many perhaps for the first time, into the depths of religions which for thousands of years have not only occupied the minds of philosophers, but have formed the ethical codes atid directed the Godward aspirations of millions and millions of human beings.

During the first ten days of the Parliament the full range of Christian conviction was also expounded. Although the principles of universal toleration for which, ideally, the Parliament stood were earnestly and well expressed by some of the Christian delegates, the notion that a universal religion meant nothing other than a universal acceptance of Christianity not only insinuated itself into the proceedings, but was sounded forth in unabashed oratory. An example or two may indicate something of the general trend.

On the third day of the Parliament, the Reverend Thomas Ebenezer Slater, of the London Missionary Society, Evangelist to educated Hindus, gave a talk entitled, “Concession to Native Ideas, having Special Reference to Hinduism.” It may be worth noting here that the Reverend Mr. Slater had written a book called, “Studies of the Upanishads,” in which he had stated: “The Vedanta, the highest conclusion of Indian thought, is based on a mistaken and pessimistic view of life ; on a fonnulated dogma unsupported by any evidence and untaught in the hymns of the Rig-Veda: the whole an elaborate and subtle process of false reasoning.” In his talk at the Parliament the Reverend T. E. Slater conceded to native ideas the fact that they were based on a search of the human spirit for the Divine. “The Vedas,” he said, “present ‘a shifting play of lights and shadows; sometimes the light seems to grow brighter, but the day never comes/ For, on examining them we note a remarkable fact. While they show that the spiritual needs and aspirations of humanity are the same … we fail to find a single text that purports to be a Divine answer to prayer, an explicit promise of Divine forgiveness, an expression of experienced peace and delight in God, as the result of assured pardon and reconciliation. There is no realization of ideas. The Bible alone is the Book of Divine Promise—the revelations of the ‘exceeding riches of God’s grace’ . . . for this reason it is unique . . And so on.

On the fourth day, the Reverend Joseph Cook from Boston, a doughty man with fuzzy sideburns, gave a talk on “Strategic Certainties of Comparative Religion” The Reverend Mr. Cook was a popular and well-known lecturer who belonged to no particular denomination—“the servant” as he said, “of no clique or clan.” He had delivered talks throughout the world, and his “Boston Monday Lectures” had been widely published. The Reverend J. Cook’s paper at the Parliament consisted of one theme repeated over and over obsessively. It was in brief this: “It is clear that we cannot escape from conscience and God and our record of sin. It is a certainty and a strategic certainty that, except Christianity, there is no religion under heaven or among men that effectively provides for the peace of the soul by its harmonization with itself, its God, and its record of sin.” The Reverend Mr. Cook concluded his talk with a poem that he wanted to have engraved on his tombstone. Space does not permit quoting the entire poem here, but perhaps two stanzas will suffice:

Endless sin means endless woe. Into endless sin I go,

If my soul, from reason rent, Takes from sin its final bent.

Balance lost, but not regained, Final bent is soon attained.

Fate is choice in fullest flower. Man is flexile—for an hour!

The Rev. J. Cook’s obsession with sin and lurking damnation was representative of what in that day was given out as religion by a large part of the Christian clergy. It is important to understand this, for one cannot otherwise appreciate, on the one hand, the shock with which some sections of the audience must have heard Swamiji’s ringing words—“Ye divinities on earth— sinners? It is a sin to call a man so. It is a standing libel on human nature”—nor, on the other hand, the enthusiastic approval of other sections. A stanza of a poem which appeared in the Open Court of October 12, 1893—a contemporary organ of popular opinion—reflects the latter reaction. The poem was entitled, “Aunt Hannah on the Parliament of Religions,” which accounts for its dialect:

Then I heered th’ han’somc Hindu monk, drest up in

orange dress,

Who sed that all humanity was part of God—no less,

An’ he said we was not sinners, so I comfort took,

once more,

While th’ Parl’mcnt of Religions roared with approving roar.

It was this approving roar with which Swamiji’s teachings were met that seriously alarmed many a Christian missionary. Later an attempt was made to set matters straight. “The Swami by his denial of sin,” the missionaries explained, “shows that he knows nothing of true religion, and that he is a teacher of deadly error. Woe! woe! woe! to those who follow a blind guide to their own destruction.” This quotation is taken from a little book entitled, “Swami Vivekananda and His Guru,” published in 1897 by The Christian literature Society for India.

Although many of the doctrines of Eastern religions that had been expounded during the first week of the Parliament by such men as Dvivcdi and Dhannapala were hair-raising in the light of the orthodox, evangelical Christianity of 1893, they had been delivered in a dry and pedantic form not apt to set fire to the soul, and were therefore not alarming to the Christian ministry. But the enthusiastic reception which Swamiji was given from the very beginning was a matter of serious concern, and it was perhaps this that prompted several of the Christian delegates to attack Hinduism openly on September 19—the very day that Swamiji was scheduled to read his paper.

On this day, Houghton tells us, “The Hall of Columbus . . . could not accommodate all who endeavored to gain admittance.” And from the Chicago Interocean, as quoted in “Swami Viveka-nanda and His Guru,” we learn that

Great crowds of people, the most of whom were women, pressed around the doors leading to the hall of Columbus, an hour before the time stated for opening the afternoon session, for it had been announced that Swami Vivekananda, the popular Hindu Monk, who looks so much like McCullough’s Othello, was to speak. Ladies, ladies everywhere filled the great auditorium.

There was, no doubt, electricity in the air, and before long it began to crackle, eventually calling forth one of Swamiji’s short but flaming rebukes—one which has not hitherto been known.

The Dubuque, Iowa, Times of September 29, 1893, gleefully reviews this ninth day of the Parliament as though a tournament were under consideration. The report, being somewhat impressionistic, does not make it entirely clear at exactly what point in the proceedings Swamiji had heard enough, but it was undoubtedly before he had delivered his “Paper on Hinduism.” The passages of the news article that have bearing on the debate are quoted here:

GOD MAN AND MATTER

Brethren All Yet They Indulged in Sharp Words.

Rev. Joe Cook Criticised the Hindoos, and the Hindoos Attacked Christianity. . . .

WORLD’S FAIR, Sept. 28.—(Special.)—The Parliament of religions reached a point where sharp acerbities develop. The thin veil of courtesy was maintained, of course, but behind it was ill feeling. Rev. Joseph Cook criticised the Hindoos sharply and was more sharply criticised in turn. He said that to speak of a universe that was not created is almost unpardonable nonsense, and the Asiatics retorted that a universe which had a beginning is a self-evident absurdity. Bishop J. P. Newman, firing at long range from the banks of the Ohio, declared that the orientals have insulted all the Christians of the United States by their misrepresentations of the missionaries, and the orientals, with their provokingly calm and supercilious smile, replied that this was simply the bishop’s ignorance.

Buddhist Philosophy

In response to the question direct, three learned Buddhists gave us in remarkably plain and beautiful language their bedrock belief about God. man and matter.

Following this is a summary of Dhannapala’s paper on “The World’s Debt to Buddha” which he prefaced, as we learn from another source, by singing a Singhalese song of benediction. The article then continues:

His [Dhannapala’s] peroration was as pretty a thing as a Chicago audience ever heard. Demosthenes never exceeded it.

Cantankerous Remarks.

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindoo monk, was not so fortunate. He was out of humor, or soon became so, apparently. He wore an orange robe and a pale yellow turban and dashed at once into a savage attack on Christian nations in these words:    “We who have come from the east have sat here day after day and have been told in a patronizing way that we ought to accept Christianity because Christian nations are the most prosperous. We look about us and we see England the most prosperous Christian nation in the world, with her foot on the neck of 250,000,000 Asiatics We look back into history and see that the prosperity of Christian Europe began with Spain. Spain’s prosperity began with the invasion of Mexico. Christianity wins its prosperity by cutting the throats of its fellow men. At such a price the Hindoo will not have prosperity.”

And so they went on, each succeeding speaker getting more cantankerous, as it were.

At the end of the afternoon session, Swamiji delivered his now famous “Paper on Hinduism.” If some of the ideas which it contained had been presented before, they had never before been presented with such sublime eloquence, nor with the full force behind them of a divine mission. There was actually no ground left for the evangelizing Christians to stand on, for not only Swamiji’s paper but Swamiji himself gave proof that Hinduism was a religion that soared to the highest reaches of the Divine—and attained them.

V

Nonetheless, up until the very last day of the Parliament, the Christians, that is to say, the missionary-minded Christians, continued to claim, with even greater insistence it would seem, that theirs was the superior religion, in fact, the only religion. The Hall of Columbus rang with such sentences as: “Christianity is absolutely superior in its motive power, its purifying influence and its uplifting inspiration from any and all other religions with which it comes in competition. The greasy bull of Madura and Tanjore has little in coittnon with the Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world,” or “The attitude … of Christianity towards religions other than itself is an attitude of universal, absolute, eternal, unappeasable hostility ; while toward all men everywhere, the adherents of false religions by no means excepted, its attitude is an attitude of grace, mercy, peace, for whosoever will.” That is, for whosoever will become a Christian!

It is tempting to go on quoting similar statements made during a parliament the avowed purpose 91 which was to bring together the representatives of the great religions of the world for mutual enlightenment and understanding. But perhaps by now the general trend has been made clear.

It must be said, however, lest the reader get too one-sided a view of the scene which confronted Swamiji, that there were several spots of light amid the gloom. There were many men attending the Parliament who were truly liberal and who were possessed of that blessed trait that seems to go with true liberality, namely, humor. Many of these were laymen. Piince Serge Wolkonsky, for instance, who informally lepresented Russia, and Colonel T. W. Higginson of Cambridge both spoke for a religion as broad and all-inclusive as the skies, and both later became friends of Swamiji. Lyman Abott, Alfred W. Momerie and Merwin-Marie Snell were others who lepirented the liberal trend and who welcomed Swamiji But the talk most remarkable for its broad views came horn the Reverend L L. Rexford of Boston, who in the course of a long paper on “ The Religious Intent” said: “No ruthless hand shall justly destioy any form of deity while set it arrests the reverent mind and heart of man. There is only one being in the woild who may legitimately destroy an idol, and that being is the one who has worshipped it. He alone can tell when it has ceased to be of service. And assuredly the Gieat Spirit who works through all forms and who makes all things his ministers, can make the rudest image a medium through which he will approach his child . . And the great religious teacheis and founders of the world have lived and taught and suffered and died and risen again, that they might bring us to themselves> No ; but that they might bring us to God. ‘God-Consciousness/ to borrow a noble woid from Calcutta, has been the goal of them all.”

Such papers were indicative of a decided swing toward a broad and liberal outlook, but they were rare. To the Chiistian clergy as a whole it never occurred that evangelism was presumption or that the occupation of soul-saving in foreign lands might be similar to carrying coals to Newcastle.

Although the Parliament was not intended to be a controversy, it was inevitable that a current of debate should weave through the entire proceedings, sometimes coursing beneath the surface, sometimes coqiing into open view. The question under consideration was not only whether or not Christianity was superior to other religions, but whether or not it was to replace other religions through missionary endeavor, and if so, how. It was a debate closely watched by a large part of the Christian world. Ofliciall), only one session—the afternoon of the twelfth day—was devoted to a discussion of this all-important issue, but actually from first to last it colored the proceedings ; it was there by implication, if not by overt expression, in most of the Christian talks; it cropped up in the papcis of the foreign delegates; and it appeared iirepressibly in unscheduled discussions.

The Christian missions were, on the one hand, scathingly criticized b) the representatives from China, Japan and India, and, on the other hand, passionately defended by the missionaries themselves. The foieign delegates contended that the failure of Christian missions was due to the fact that the missionaries were intolerant, selfish, ignorant and bigoted, and also to the fact that the countries the) represented were an)tiling but Christ-like in their imperialistic policies. Moreover, while maintaining respect toward Christianity, the non-Christian religions showed beyond any reasonable doubt that Christian conversion was not necessary to salvation. The Christian speakers replied to the effect that (1) Christian missions were ?iot a failure ; (2) although individual missionaries might make mistakes, missionaries were, on the whole, worthy lollowcrs of Christ; (8) Christianity was the only religion that gave assurance of salvation.

Although Swamiji found it necessary to deliver a few decisive blows as the extent and virulence of Christian bigotry became more and more apparent, it was on the whole the other foreign delegates who in prepared tttlks roundly trounced the missionaries. In the course of expounding the doctrines of their respective religions during the first days of the Parliament, the Confucian, Pung Kwang Yu. and the Japanese Buddhist, Horin Toki, found little that was good in the intrusion of Christian missionaries into China and Japan. The missionaries, they said, were uneducated, arrogant and totally unnecessary. Such denunciations were delivered with impeccable and devastating politeness. A third talk, given by Kinza Riuge M. Hirai, a Buddhist layman of Japan, attributed the failure of Christian missions in his country not to the missionaries themselves, nor to the fact that Japan was already possessed of a satisfactory religion, but to the immoralities of Christian nations in their treatment of the Japanese people. This was an essentially political speech, and it brought down the house. The Chicago Herald of September 14, 1893, as quoted by Barrows, reported:

Loud applause followed many of his [Hirai’s] declarations, and a thousand cries of “shame” were heard when he pointed to the wrongs which his countrymen had suffered through the practices of false Christianity. When he had finished, Dr. Barrows grasped his hand, and the Rev. Jenkin Lloyd-Jones threw his arm around his neck, while the audience cheered vociferously and waved hats and handkerchiefs in the excess of enthusiasm.

Shortly the Hindus entered the field. Nagarkar. the Brahmo Samajist, cried on the seventh day for less soul-saving and more education. “Little, how little, do you ever dream that your money is expended in spreading abroad nothing but Christian dogmatism and Christian bigotry, Christian pride and Christian exclusiveness. I entreat you to spend at least one-tenth of all this vast fortune on sending out to our country, unscctarian, broad-learned missionaries that will spend all their efforts and energies in educating our women, our men, and our masses” The force of this plea, however, was lost in a talk devoted, on the one hand, to a rhapsodic tribute to the moral and civilizing influence of English rule in India—an account which must have caused Swamiji no little anguish—and, on the other hand, to the reform movement of the Brahmo Samaj.

The evening session of the tenth day “was concluded,” Barrows says, “by a brief speech from Swami Vivekananda.” This was the now well-known address, “Religion Not the Crying Need of India.” The version of this talk, as quoted in Volume I of “The Complete Works,” is provocative enough, but there is evidence that it is not quoted in full. The Christian Herald of October 11, 1893, includes in its article on the Parliament some quotations from?* the address that are new to us. “Christian missionaries” Swamiji is here reported as having said, “come and offer life, but only on condition that the Hindus become Christians, abandoning the faith of their fathers and forefathers. Is it right? … If you wish to illustrate the meaning of ‘brotherhood/ treat the Hindu more kindly, even though he be a Hindu and is faithful to his religion. Send missionaries to them to teach them how better to earn a piece of bread, and not teach them metaphysical nonsense”

The Catholics received Swamiji’s criticism with hearty enthusiasm. In the chapter of Barrows’ history entitled “Introduction to the Parliament Papers” it is reported that “ . . . on the eleventh day, Bishop Keane said:    ‘I endorse the denunciation that was hurled forth last night against the system of pretended charity that offered food to the hungry Hindus at the cost of their conscience and faith. It is a shame and a disgrace to those who call themselves Christians.’ . . . Bishop Keane, who read Mr. Donnelly’s review of the history of Catholic charity, said that in India their system was one of absolute indifference to the religious faith of the need), and in addition to endorsing the denunciation by Mr. Vivekananda of Christian charity any way limited to converts, he pronounced justifiable, from the Hindu point of view, ‘the denunciation of the Christian system of the atonement, that same also from the heart of the Hindu monk.’ He declared that we do not hear half enough of such criticism, and that if by these criticisms Vivekananda can only stir us and sting us into better teachings and better doings in the great work of Christ in the world, he for one would only be grateful to our friend the Hindu monk.”

Turning to the actual report of Bishop John J. Keane’s reading of Mr. Donnelly’s paper, we find a further parenthetical observation:    ”… My heart was glad when I listened last night and heard our good friend, the Hindu, confess that for years he did not know where he was going to get his next meal. That was the way with these poor Franciscan monks. They were reduced to poverty in order that they might better consecrate themselves to the service of God everywhere.”

Here again is evidence that Swamiji said more in his talk than has been recorded in any of the histories of the Parlia-raent. It is also possible that Swamiji spoke at other sessions on the subject of missionaries, for the Outlook, October 7, 1893, in giving an impressionistic picture of the Parliament, adds this highlight:

. . . The subject of Christian work in India calls Vivekananda, in his brilliant priestly orange, to his feet. He criticises the work of Christian missions. It is evident that he has not tried to understand Christian-ity, but neither, as he claims, have its priests made any effort to understand his religion, with its ingrained faiths and race-prejudices , of thousands of years’ standing. They have simply come, in his view, to throw scorn on his most sacred beliefs, and to undermine the morals and spirituality of the people he has been set to teach.

This may or may not be a reference to Swamiji’s talk, “Religion Not the Crying Need of India,” on the tenth evening, but in any case, it is certain that the full text of Swamiji’s extemporaneous utterances at the Parliament have not been recorded.

The afternoon of the twelfth day of the Parliament was officially devoted to the “Criticism and Discussion of Missionary Methods.” “On this day,” Barrows tells us, “the crowds in the Hall of Columbus were, if possible, more dense than on any previous day.” It is conceivable that these crowds expected to witness a row. If so, they were destined to disappointment, for there was no row. Dhannapala and Narasimhacharya represented the Eastern religions; the Reverends G. T. Candlin and R. E. Hume, the Christian. (Swamiji was not present, being that afternoon at the Scientific Section.) Each gave a short but cogent talk. Dhannapala, who opened the discussion, did not spare the missionaries; whereupon, in reply, the Reverend George T. Candlin, an American missionary to China, who for some reason always dressed during the Parliament in Chinese costume, objected with indignation to Dharmapala’s “personal remarks.” Narasimhacharya, who followed, did not attribute the failure of Christianity to the selfishness and intolerance of the missionaries, but rather to their interference with native custom.

It was, of course, not to be admitted by the Christians that Christian missionary work had by any means failed in foreign lands. The Reverend Mr. Hume informed Narasimhacharva that “in a generation all the positions of influence and of responsibility will be in the hands of the Christian community in India” and went on to add that missionaries sometimes do make mistakes and are grateful for correction. This same minister, as will be seen in a following chapter, attempted some months later without success to engage Swamiji in public controversy.

The session was short, and it was over without mishap. But the tension that had accumulated throughout the Parliament finally broke down the control of the Reverend George T. Pentecost, who on the following Sunday, when Swamiji was quite probably present, interspersed throughout his paper many glaring violations of the Parliament’s watchword:    “Tolerance and Fraternity.” For a report of this incident I quote from Barrows:

“The argument of [Pentecost’s paper, “The Invincible Gospel,”] was the ultimate triumph of Christianity as assured by its essential superiority to all other religions. Certain impromptu remarks interjected between the lines of the paper drew forth a reply on the following day. He was reported by the press as saying:    ’Some of the Brahmans of India have been here and have dared to make an attack upon Christianity. They take the slums of New York and Chicago and ask us why we do not cure ourselves. They take what is outside the pale of Christianity and judge Christianity by it.’ Proceeding then to attack the religious systems of India on the point of morality, he alleged that among the followers of Brahmanism there were thousands of temples in which there were hundreds of priestesses who were known as immoral and profligate. They were prostitutes because they were priestesses, *9hd priestesses because they were prostitutes.”

It is true that the Reverend Mr. Pentecost represented the extreme of bigotry and not the spirit of the Parliament; but he represented also that large number of his kind, both in America and in India, who were later to do their utmost to destroy Swamiji.

VI

On the evening of September 27, after seventeen days of long, sometimes tiresome, sometimes stirring sessions, the Parliament of Religions came to a close. Every shade of religious thought had been expressed, from the most light-filled to the most clouded, and it could not have been lost upon the audience— indeed, it was not—that the heights of spiritual expression came from the least expected quarters.

Yet despite the fact that because of this complete reversal there were moments of tension that came close to justifying the fears of those who had predicted a scene of discord rather than one of harmony, the total impression one receives through reading the accounts of the Parliament is one of festivity. It was as though, no matter what some of Her children might have thought, the Divine Mother had arranged this party and was present through it all. It is difficult to put one’s linger on the source of this impression. It is not to be found in the high-flown protestations of harmony, nor is it in the handkerchief-waving. Perhaps it is simply in the fact that, regardless of what was said about God, most of the delegates spoke of Him in earnestness, and in the further fact that each was allowed to say what he would. Certainly at the dose of the Parliament the elation was marked.

“More than seven thousand persons were crowded into the Halls of Washington and Columbus,” Barrows writes. “For more than an hour before the time announced, the eager crowds swept up againsi the doors of the Art Palace. The throng extended from the doorways to Michigan avenue and thence for half a block in either direction. … An eye-witness reports: .. The last and dosing scene of the great Parliament of Religions is one that will live forever in the memory of those who were so fortunate as to be spectators. The great Hall of Columbus was illuminated by a myriad of lights. Every inch of room was used by the greatest crowd that ever sat within its walls. On the stage, beneath the folds of the flags of all nations, were the representatives of all religions. The dull, black and somber raiment of the West only intensified the radiantly contrasted garbs of the Oriental priests Twice during the evening flashlight photographs were taken of the historic group on the platform. (Lest the reader forget, the illumination was gas light, and the flashlight a burst of gunpowder.)

In passing it should perhaps be noted that Swamiji unfortunately does not appear on the platform in any of the published pictures of the Parliament, of which there aie thiec, taken, respectively, on the morning of September 14, the morning of September 21, and the evening of September 27. In the last of these, which has been published in the second edition of “The Life,”‘ Swamiji has been tentatively identified in the front row of the delegates; I am sony to say that a comparison with an enlarged and annotated copy of the same picture shows that this is not Swamiji but that “loafer,” Narasimhacharya. There must, however, be several unpublished pictures in existence of the Parliament platform in which Swamiji appears. We have been fortunate enough to have seen one of these and are including it in the piesent volume.

The immediate results of the Parliament were mixed. Perhaps it is correct to say that the bigots became more bigoted, for their backs had been pressed to the wall, and that the liberal-minded became more libeial, for they were now confirmed in their views, and that this latter outcome was undoubtedly the mote important and enduring. It is undeniable, moreover, that the American people had not been merely intellectually impressed by the nobility and supreme wisdom of Eastern doctrines which hitherto, in the words of Dr. Alfred Momcrie, “they had been taught to regard with contempt,*’ but that they had been touched by and had responded to the tremendous power of living spirituality that Swamiji embodied Something far more important and more far reaching had taken place than an intellectual appreciation of Bastern religions. It was as though the soul of America had long asked for spiritual sustenance and had now been answered.

This is not to say, as has sometimes been implied, that Swamiji was recognized by all for what he was—the spiritual leader of the age. Some attributed greater spirituality, for instance, to Mazoomdar, whose talk on the Brahmo Samaj unaccountably inspired the multitude to rise to its feet arid sing the hymn, “Nearer, my God, to Thee. The Advocate of September 28, 1893, after stating that Swamiji’s “knowledge of English is as though it were his mother tongue” went on to say:

. . . This is equally true of Mazoomdar, who however is a man of far greater spirituality and profounder religious conviction. The chief representative of the Brahmo Samaj, he is careful to say that he did not get his religion from the missionaries, but that it is an evolution out of Hinduism, now laying hold of all that is true in that as in all other forms of religion, but culminating in the acceptance of Jesus Christ as the Son of God and the Savior of the world.

It is not too surprising that the Advocate gave first place to Mazoomdar. In the same article the observation was made that since “most of the representatives of the religions of India and Japan were accomplished English scholars, … it was inevitable . . . that their expositions of Brahminism, of Shintoism, should take colouring from the truths they had learned directly or indirectly of Christ.”

It is amusing in this connection to take note of Barrows’ remarks in regard to Swamiji’s final address. As will be remembered, Swamiji said in the course of his talk: The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist, nor a Hindu or a Buddhist to become a Christian. But each must assimilate the spirit of the others and yet preserve its individuality and grow according to its own law of growth.” This was, of course, not at all the looked-for lesson of the Parliament. Certainly the Christian was not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist. With Swamiji most would have cried, “God forbid! ” But the halls had resounded with the conviction that the Hindus and Buddhists were to become Christians. Barrows tells us:”Swami Vivekananda was always heard with interest by the Parliament, but very little approval was shown to some of the sentiments expressed in his closing address.”

The public reaction was different. A description of the closing scene is quoted here from the Critic of October 7, 1893, with ’the omission of the text of Swamiji’s address:

. . . The scene was one not to be easily forgotten. Before an audience which filled every copier of the great hall, the delegates from distant lands paid tribute to the purity of Christian ideals. They bore witness to the spirit of charity which animated the speakers of the congress, and a kind of exhilaration possessed them, as of something large and line accomplished. With the black-coated Occidentals were seated thus the dark-skinned men from the East., quiet, attentive and dignified.

A young African prince, whose black face showed what is best in the Ethiopian type, arose in his dark-richly-embroidcred robes, to express a conviction that the Parliament had promoted a feeling for the brotherhood of man which can unite all races. “The very atmosphere,” he said, “seems pregnant with an indefinable. inexpressible thing—something too solemn for human utterance.” And it was this background to the joyousness that appealed to the imagination and gave the occasion its peculiar impressiveness. . . .

But the most impressive figures of the Parliament were the Buddhist priest, H. Dharmapala of Ceylon, and the Hindoo monk. Suami Vivekananda. “If theology and dogma stand in your way in search of truth,” said the former incisively, “put them aside. Learn to think without prejudice, to love all beings for love’s sake, to express your convictions fearlessly, to lead a life of purity, and the sunlight of truth will illuminate you.” But eloquent as were many of the brief speeches at this meeting, whose triumphant enthusiasm rightly culminated in the superb rendering by the Apollo Club of the TIallelujah chorus, no one expressed so well the spirit of the Parliament, its limitations and its finest influence, as did the Hindoo monk. I copy his address in full, but I can only suggest its effect upon the audience, for he is an orator by divine right, and his strong intelligent face in its picturesque setting of yellow and orange was hardly less interesting than these earnest words and the ricli, rhythmical utterance he gave them. . . . [After quoting the greater part of Swamiji’s Final Address, the article continues: ]

Perhaps the most tangible result of the congress was the feeling it aroused in regard to foreign missions. The impertinence of sending half-educated theological students to instruct the wise and erudite Orientals was never brought home to an English-speaking audience more forcibly. It is only in the spirit of tolerance and sympathy that we are at liberty to touch their faith, and the exhorters who possess these qualities are rare. It is necessary to realize that we have quite as much to learn from the Buddhists as they from us, and that only through harmony can the highest influence be exerted.

Chicago, 3 Oct., 1893.    LUCY MONROE.

Other organs of public opinion attest to Swamiji’s popularity and influence. Many quotations from these are already known to the readers of “The Life,” but one moie can here be added from the Chicago Interorean of September 1, 1894, which almost a year following the Parliament recalled Swamiji’s unquestionable popularity:

VIVEKANANDA AND THE HINDOOS

There was no delegate to the Parliament of Religions who attracted more courteous attention in Chicago by his winning ways, his ability, and his fearless discussion of all questions relating to his religion than Swami Vivekananda, who represented the Hindoos of South India. This distinguished Hindoo was enthusiastic in his admiration of the greatness of rlie Western World and its material development, eager in his efforts to learn of those things that might be beneficial to his people, earnest in his desire to recognize the religions of all people as related to each other, and all sincere efforts in behalf of virtue and holiness, but at the same time he defended the Hindoo religion and philosophy with an eloquence and power that not only won admiration for himself but consideration for his own teachings.

To a request of the New York World of October 1, 1893, for “a sentiment or expression regarding the significance of the great meeting” from each representative, Swamiji replied with a quotation from the Gita and one from Vyasa:

“I am He that am in every religion—like the thread that passes through a string of pearls.” “Holy, perfect and pure men are seen in all creeds, therefore they all lead to the same truth—for how can nectar be the outcome of poison?”

And this certainly was the lesson learned through the Parliament. Though some may have been loath to acknowledge it at the time, it was a lesson that struck deep and that was not forgotten. The back of bigotry, although not broken, had received its first hard blow.

I

Among the many gaps in the biographies of Swami Vivekananda is one which appears after the Parliament of Religions and extends over the period comprising the last part of 1893 and almost the whole of 1894. This gap, to be sure, is not total. We know, for instance, that Swamiji toured through the Middle West and East, lecturing in many cities, for a time in connection with a lecture bureau and later independently, and also we catch distant and disconnected glimpses of him as he went from place to place. But when we consider the hundreds of conversations he must have held during this period, the scores of lectures and the many private interviews he must have given, to say nothing of the innumerable spiritual experiences he must have had, we cannot help feeling dissatisfied with the meagemess of our present knowledge. In this current chapter, therefore, and in those to follow I have tried to throw a little more light upon Swamiji’s post-Parliament activities.

One thing that has been obscure is the length of time Swamiji remained in Chicago before commencing his lecture tour. Supported by one or two contemporary reports, we can now hazard the guess that he made his home there for at least two months, during which time he took short trips to nearby towns. In connection with this period we are fortunate enough to have two heretofore unpublished letters that Swamiji wrote to Dr. Wright. These are, I believe, among the most valuable of his letters, for they not only supply facts regarding his activities but convey something of his ecstatic state of mind during the early days of his American mission. The first letter, which follows, was written on October 2:

Chicago

the 2nd October ’93

Dear Adhyapakji—

I do not know what you are thinking of my long silence. In the first place I dropped in on the Congress in the eleventh hour. And quite unprepared and that kept me very very busy for some time. Secondly I was speaking almost every day in the Congress and had no time to write and last and greatest of all—my kind friend I owe so much to you that it would have been an insult to your Ahetuka (unselfish) friendship to have written you business like letters in a hurry. The Congress is now over.

Dear brother I was so so afraid to sland before that great assembly of fine speakers and thinkers from all over the world and speak but the Lord gave me strength and I almost every day heroically (?) faced the platform and the audience. If I have done well He gave me the strength for it if I have miserably failed—I knew’ that before hand—for I am hopelessly ignorant.

Your friend prof. Bradley was very kind to me and he always cheered me on And oh! everybody is so kind here to me who am nothing—that it is beyond my power of expression. Glory unto Him in the highest in whose sight the poor ignorant monk from India is the same as the learned divines of this mighty land. And how the Lord is helping me every day of ray life brother—I sometimes wish for a life of million million ages to serve Him through the work dressed in rags and fed by charity.

Oh how I wished that you were here to see some of our sweet ones from India—the tender hearted Buddhist Dhainmapala the orator Mazootndar and realize that in that far off and poor India there are hearts that beat in sympathy to yours, born and brought up in this mighty —and great country.

My eternal respects to your holy wife and to your sweet children my eternal love and blessings.

Col Higginson a very broad man told me that your daughter had written to his daughter about me and he was very sympathetic to me. I am going to Evanston tomorrow and hope to see prof. Bradley there.

May He make us all more and more pure and holy so that we may live a perfect spiritual life even before throwing off this earthly body.

Vivekananda

[The letter continues on a separate sheet of paper: ]

I am now going to be reconciled to my life here. All my life I have been taking every circumstance as coming from him and calmly adapt myself to it. At first in America I was almost out of my water I was afraid I would have to give up the accustomed way of being guided by the Lord and cater for myself—and what a honid piece of mischief and ingratitude was that. I now clearly see that He who was guiding me on the snow tops of the Himalayas and the burning plaines [sic] of India is here to help me and guide me. Glory unto Him in the highest. So I have calmly fallen in my old ways. Some body or other gives me a shelter and food some body or other comes to ask me to speak about Him and I know He sends them and mine is to obey. And then He is supplying my necessities and His will be done

“He who rests [in] Me and gives up all other self assertion and struggles I carry to him whatever he needs” Gita

So it is in Asia So in Europe So in America So in the deserts of India So in the rush of business in America for is He not here also? And if He does not I only would take for granted that He wants that I should lay aside this three minutes body of clay—and hope to lay it down gladly—

We may or may not meet brother. He knows. You are great learned and Holy. I dare not preach to you or your wife—but to your children—I quote these passages from the Vedas—

“The four Vedas, Sciences, languages, philosophy and all other learnings are only ornamental the real learning—the true Knowledge is that which enables us to reach him who is unchangeable in His love”

“How real, how tangible, how visible is He through whom the skin touches the eyes see and the world gets its reality”

“Hearing Him nothing remains to be heard

Seeing Him nothing remains to be seen

Attaining Him nothing remains to be attained”

“He is the eye of our eyes the ear of our ears the

Soul of our Souls.”

He is nearer to you my dears than even your father and mother—you are innocent and pure as flowers— remain so and He will reveal Himself unto you. Dear Austin when you are playing there is another playmate playing with you who loves you more than anybody else and oh He is so full of fun. He is always playing— sometimes with great big balls which we call the sun and earth sometimes with little children like you and laughing and playing with you.

How funny it would be to see him and play with Him my dear think of it.

Dear Adhyapakji, I am moving about just now— only when I come to Chicago—I always go to see Mr. and Mrs. Lyons one of the noblest couples I have seen here. If you would be kind enough to write to me kindly address it to the care of Mr. John B. Lyons 262 Michigan Ave Chicago.

“He who gets hold of the One in this world of many—The one constant existence in a world of flitting shadows—the One life m a world of Death—He alone crosses this sea of misery and struggle. None else none else” Vedas

“He who is the Brahman of the Vedantins Ishwara of the Naiyayikas, Purusha of the Sankhyas, cause of the Mimamsakas Laiv of the Buddhists absolute zero of the Atheists and love infinite unto those that love, may [He] take us all under His merciful protection” Udayanacharya(a great philosopher of the Nyaya os Dualistic school and this is the Benediction pronounced at the very beginning of his wonderful book “Kusumanjali a handful of flowers” in which He attempts to establish the existence of a personal creator and moral ruler of infinite love independently of revelation.)

Yours ever grateful friend Vivekananda

Until recently, where Swamiji stayed during the sessions of the Parliament of Religions has been a mystery. Suddenly, however, floods of light have been thrown on the subject. Thanks to Cornelia Conger, a granddaughter of Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lyons, whom Swamiji mentions in the above letter, we learn that it was they who were his hosts during this period. Cornelia Conger was only six years old in 1893, but her memories of Swamiji are vivid, and her excellent “Memoirs of Swami Vivekananda” which appeared in the Prabuddha Bharata of May 1956 give an invaluable picture of him at this important time in his life. It is to Swami Shankarananda, President of the Ramakrishna Math and Mission in India, that we owe Miss Conger’s article, for, having considered her memories “childish and trivial,” she had been reluctant to give them written form. “But the Swami [Shankarananda] said something,” Miss Conger writes, “infinitely kind and gracious which I shall never forget: That every great man is like a jewel with many facets. That each facet is important as it reflects a different aspect of his character.” “So here,” she continues, “is my very tiny ‘facet’ offered in memory of someone I have loved for all these 62 years.” Her “Memoirs” read in part:

Before the Congress (or Parliament) of Religions met in Chicago at the time of the Columbian Exposition in 1893, members of various churches volunteered to ask into their homes as guests delegates to it. My grandmother, Mrs. John B. Lyon, was one of these, requesting, if possible, that a delegate who was broadminded be sent to us as my grandfather was much interested in philosophy but heartily disliked bigots!

Our home was 262, Michigan Avenue, a pleasant somewhat old-fashioned frame house, painted olive green with boxes of red geraniums across the front. It was full of guests all that summer as my grandparents were naturally hospitable and this World’s Fair was a very exciting and fascinating affair. So all our out-of-town relatives and friends were eager to come to Chicago to see it. When word came that our delegate was to arrive on a certain evening, the house was so crowded that my grandmother had to send her elder son to a friend’s house to have his room for our guest. We had been given no idea who he would be nor even what religion he was representing. A message came that a member of our Church—the First Presbyterian—would bring him after midnight. Everyone went to bed except my grandmother who waited up to receive them. When she answered the doorbell, there stood Swami Vivekananda in a long yellow robe, a red sash, and a red turban—a very startling sight to her because she had probably never seen an East Indian before. She welcomed him warmly and showed him to his room. When she went to bed she was somewhat troubled. Some of our guests-were Southerners as we had many friends in the South because we owned a sugar plantation on the Bayou Teche in Louisiana. Southerners have a strong dislike for associating with anyone but whites because they stupidly think of all people who are darker as on a mental and social plane of their former Negro slaves. My grandmother herself had no color prejudice and she was sufficiently intelligent anyway to know that Indians are of the same Caucasian inheritance as we are.

When my grandfather woke up, she told him of the problem and said he must decide whether it would be uncomfortable for Swami and for our Southern friends to be together. If so, she said he could put Swami up as our guest at the new Auditorium Hotel near us. My grandfather was dressed about half an hour before breakfast and went into the library to read his morning paper. There he found Swami and, before breakfast was served, he came to my grandmother and said, “I don’t care a bit, Emily, if all our guests leave! This Indian is the most brilliant and interesting man who has ever been in our home and he shall stay as long as he wishes.” That began a warm friendship between them which was later summed up—much to my grandfather’s embarrassment!—by having Swami calmly remark to a group of my grandfather’s friends one day at the Chicago Club: “I believe Mr. Lyon is the most Christ-like man I ever met!”

He seemed to feel especially close to my grandmother, who reminded him of his own mother. She was short and very erect, with quiet dignity and assurance, excellent common sense, and a dry humor that he enjoyed. My mother, who was a pretty and charming young widow, and I—who was only six years old—lived with them. My grandmother and my mother attended most of the meetings of the Congress of Religions and heard Swamiji speak there and later at lectures he gave. I know he helped my sad young mother who missed her young husband so much. Mother read and studied Swamiji’s books later and tried to follow his teachings.

My memories are simply of him as a guest in our home—of a great personality who is still vivid to me! His brilliant eyes, his charming voice with the lilt of a •slight well-bred Irish biogue, his warm smile! He told me enchanting stories of India, of monkeys and peacocks, and flights of bright green p;irrots, of banyan trees and masses of flowers, and markets piled with all colors of fruits and vegetables. To me they sounded like fairy stories, but now that I have driven over many hundreds of miles of Indian roads, I realize that he was simply describing scenes from the memories of his own boyhood. I used to rush up to him when he came into the house and cry, “Tell me another story, Swami,” and climb into his lap. Perhaps, so far from home and in so strange a country, he found comfort in the love and enthusiasm of a child. He was always wonderful to me! Yet—because a child is sensitive—I can remember times when I would run into his room and suddenly know he did not want to be disturbed—when he was in meditation. He asked me many questions about what I learned in school and made me show him my school-books and pointed out India to me on the map—it was pink, I recall—and told me about his country. He seemed sad that little Indian girls did not have, in general, the chance to have as good an education as we American children. . . . My grandmother was president of the Women’s Hospital at home and he visited it with lively interest and asked for all the figures in infant mortality, etc.

I was fascinated by his turban which struck me as a very funny kind of a hat, especially as it had to be wound up afresh every time he put it on! I persuaded him to let me sec him wrap it back and forth around his head.

As our American food is less highly seasoned than Indian, my grandmother was afraid he might find it flat. He told us, on arrival, that he had been told to conform to all the customs and the food of his hosts, so he ate as we did. My grandmother used to make a little ceremony of making salad dressing at the table and one of the condiments she used was Tabasco Sauce, put up by some friends of hers, the Mcllhennys, in Louisiana. She handed him the bottle and said, “You might like a drop or two of this on your meat, Swami.” He sprinkled it on with such a lavish hand that we all gasped and said, “But you can’t do that! It’s terribly hot! ” He laughed and ate it with such enjoyment that a special bottle of the sauce was always put at his place after that.

My mother took him to hear his first Symphony Concert on a Friday afternoon. He listened with great attention but with his head a bit on one side and a slightly quizzical expression. “Did you enjoy it?” mother asked at the end. “Yes, it was very beautiful” he replied, but mother felt it was said with some reservation. “What are you thinking?” she asked. “I‘ am puzzled by two things,” he answered. “First. I do not understand why the program says that this same program will be repeated on Saturday evening.. You see in India, one type of music is played at dawn. The music for noontime is very different, and that for the evening is also of a special character. So I should think that what sounds suitable to your ears in the early afternoon would not sound harmonious to you at night. The other thing that seems strange to me is the lack of overtones in the music and the greater intervals between the notes. To my ears it has holes in it like that good Swiss cheese you give mel”

When he began to give lectures, people offered him money for the work he hoped to do in India. He had no purse. So he used to tie it up in a handkerchief and bring it back—like a proud little boy!—pour it into my grandmother’s lap to keep for him. She made him learn the different coins and to stack them up neatly and to count them. She made him write down the amount each time, and she deposited in her bank for hirn. He was overwhelmed by the generosity of his audience who seemed so happy to give to help people they had never seen so far away!

Once he said to my grandmother that he had had the greatest temptation of his life in America. She liked to tease him a bit and said, “Who is she, Swami?” He burst out laughing and said, “Oh, it is not a lady, it is Organization!” He explained how the followers of Ramakrishna had all gone out alone and when they reached a village, would just quietly sit under a tree and wait for those in trouble to come to consult them. But in the States he saw how much could be accomplished by organizing work. Yet he was doubtful about just what type of organization would be acceptable to the Indian character and he gave a great deal of thought and study how to adapt what seemed good to him in our Western World to the best advantage of his own people. … I spoke earlier of his delightful slight Irish brogue. . . . My grandfather used to joke him about it. But Swami said it was probably because his favorite professor was an Irish gentleman, a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin.

After Swami left us, my mother was eager to do some studying along the lines of Oriental philosophy, as she realized she had not enough background to understand his teachings as fully as she wished. A Mrs. Peake held some classes in Chicago that following winter and, in the course of them, mother discovered much to her surprise that if she held a letter tom up into fine bits between her hands, she received a brief but vivid impression of the writer, both physically and mentally. When Swamiji returned to Chicago a year or so later to give lectures, mother asked him about this strange gift and he said he had it also, and that when he was young he used to have fun doing it to show off, but Ramakrishna had rapped his knuckles and said, “Don’t use this great gift except for the good of mankind! Hands that receive these impressions can also bring relief from pain. Use this gift to bring healing!”

On this second visit, he only stayed with us for a short time. He knew he could teach better if he lived in his own regime of food and of many hours for meditation. It also left him free to receive many who came to him for help. So my grandmother helped him find a simple but comfortable little flat, but I do not recall that I ever saw it.

Swamiji was such a dynamic and attractive personality that many women were quite swept away by him and made every effort by flattery to gain his interest. He was still young and, in spite of his great spirituality and his brilliance of mindrseemed to be very unworldly. This used to trouble my grandmother who feared he might be put in a false or uncomfortable position and she tried to caution him a little. Her concern touched and amused him and he patted her hand and said, “Dear Mrs. Lyon, you dear American mother of mine, don’t be afraid for me! It is true I often sleep under a banyan tree with a bowl of rice given me by a kindly peasant, but it is equally true that I also am sometimes the guest in the palace of a great Maharajah and a slave girl is appointed to wave a peacock feather fan over me all night longl I am used to temptation and you need not fear for me I ”

… I asked my mother’s sister, Katharine (Mrs. Robert W. Hamil) what she could add to my scattered memories. She was a bride and had her own home.

So she was not at her mother’s and father’s so yery much. She recalled Swamiji much as I did, but never heard him lecture. However, she and her husband were “young intellectuals” and had a group of young professors from our university, young newspaper men, etc. around them. One Sunday evening she was telling them how remarkable Swamiji was and they said that modem scientists and psychologists could “show up” his religious beliefs in no timel She said, “If I can persuade him to come here next Sunday evening, will you all come back and meet him?” They agreed and Swamiji met them all at an informal supper party. My aunt does not recall just what subjects were brought up, but that the entire evening was a lively and interesting debate on all sorts of ideas. Aunt Katharine said that Swamiji’s great knowledge of the Bible and the Koran as well as the various Oriental religions, his grasp of science and of psychology were astounding. Before the evening was over the “doubting Thomases” threw up their hands and admitted that Swamiji had held his own on every point and they parted from him with warmest admiration and affection.

During the two months Swamiji lived in Chicago, he not only lectured in and about the city, but absorbed all kinds of information regarding the workings of Western civilization, in so far as such information could be of benefit to India. Chicago offered him a broad field of study, for there is little representative of the West that cannot be found there ; and this was as true in 1893 as it is today.

The Chicago correspondent of the Critic, Lucy Monroe, whose article of October 7 was quoted in the last chapter, again wrote about Swamiji on November 11. Lucy Monroe, it might be mentioned here, was a sister of Harriet Monroe, the poetess, whose vivid description of Swamiji has also been quoted. Unlike her sister, Lucy Monroe went to hear Swamiji more than once, not merely because of her duty as a reporter but, to judge from her articles, because of her personal appreciation of him. A small portion of the following report may be familiar to the reader, for, by way of illustrating the fact that he was proving to America that Hindus “are not savages,” Swamiji himself quoted from it in a letter to India. The full report reads as follows:

THE CHICAGO LETTER

… It was an outgrowth of the Parliament of Religions, which opened our eyes to the fact that the philosophy of the ancient creeds contains much beauty for the moderns. When we had once clearly perceived this, our interest in their exponents quickened, and with characteristic eagerness we set out in pursuit of knowledge. The most available means of obtaining it, after the close of the Parliament, was through the addresses and lectures of Suami Vivekananda, who is still in this city. His original purpose in coming to this country was to interest Americans in the starting of new industries among the Hindoos, but he has abandoned this for the present, because he finds that, as “the Americans are the most charitable people in the world,” every man with a purpose comes here for assistance in carrying it out. When asked about the relative condition of the poor here and in India, he replied that our poor would be princes there, and tharhe had been taken through the worst quarter of the city only to find it, from the standpoint of his knowledge, comfortable and even pleasant.

A Brahmin of the Brahmins, Vivekananda gave up his rank to join the brotherhood of monks, where all pride of caste is voluntarily relinquished. And yet he bears the mark of race upon his person. His culture, his eloquence, and his fascinating personality have given us a new idea of Hindoo ciwlization. He is an interesting figure, his fine, intelligent, mobile face in its setting of yellows, and his deep, musical voice prepossessing one at once in his favor. So it is not strange that he has been taken up by the literary clubs, has preached and lectured in churches, until the life of Buddha and the doctrines of his faith have grown familiar to us. He speaks without notes, presenting his facts and his conclusions with the greatest art, the most convincing sincerity; and rising at times to a rich, inspiring eloquence. As learned and cultivated, apparently, as the most accomplished Jesuit, he has also something Jesuitical in the character of his mind ; but though the little sarcasms thrown into his discourses are as keen as a rapier, they are so delicate as to be lost on many of his hearers. Nevertheless his courtesy is unfailing, for these thrusts are never pointed so directly at our customs as to be rude. At present he contents himself with enlightening us in regard to his religion and the words of its philosophers, fie looks forward to the time when we shall pass beyond idolatry—now necessary in his opinion to the ignorant classes,—beyond worship, even, to a knowledge of the presence of God in nature, of the divinity and responsibility of man. “Work out your own salvation” he says with the dying Buddha ; “I cannot help you. No man can help you. Help yourself.”

In connection with the above statement that Swamiji had abandoned his purpose of interesting Americans in the starting of new industries among the Hindus, the second hitherto unpublished letter to Prof. Wright clarifies his ideas on the subject:

c/of J. Lyons 262 Michigan av.

Chicago

26 October ’93

Dear Adhyapakji

You would be glad to know that I am doing well here and that almost everybody has been very kind to me, except of course the very orthodox. Many of the men brought together here from far off lands have got projects and ideas and missions to carry out and America is the only place where there is a chance of success for everything. But I thought better and have given up speaking about my project entirely—because I am sure now—the heathen draws more than his project. So I want to go to work earnestly for my own project only keeping the project in the background and working like any other lecturer.

He who has brought me hither and has not left me yet will not leave me ever I am here. You will be glad to know that I am doing well and expect to do very well in the way of getting money. Of course I am too green in the business but would soon learn my trade. I am very popular in Chicago So I want to stay here a little more and get money.

Tomorrow I am going to lecture on Buddhism at the ladies’ fortnightly club—which is the most influential in this city. How to thank you my kind friend or Him who brought you to me—for now I think the success of my project probable and it is you who have made it so.

May blessings and happiness attend every step of your progress in this world.

My love and blessings to your children

Yours affly ever Vivekananda

In September, 1894, almost a year after the Parliament, the Interocean, a Chicago newspaper, ran an article on Swamiji, which I have referred to before and which included a sentence pertinent to the weeks with which we are concerned at present:

. . . Vivekananda lingered in Chicago for several months after the great Parliament of Religions closed, studying many questions relating to schools and the material advancement of civilization in order to carry back to’ his own people as convincing arguments regarding America as he brought to this country concerning the morality and spirituality of his own people.

Although Swamiji “lingered in Chicago” for so long a time, the only definite information we have at present regarding his lectures in the city comes from his letter of October 26 (quoted above), in which he says:    “Tomorrow [October 27] I am going to lecture on Buddhism at the ladies’ fortnightly club—which is the most influential in this city.” We have, however, been able to gather from the contemporary newspapers a few reports regarding his lecture engagements in neighboring towns. As has been seen in his letter of October 2, Swamiji visited Evanston, a city just north of Chicago, where Prof. Wright’s friend, Dr. Bradley, lived. The Evanston lecture engagement was made almost immediately after the Parliament in conjunction with Dr. Carl von Bergen, a fellow delegate from Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. von Bergen, to judge from a photograph published in “Neely’s History of the Parliament of Religions,” was a rather formidable, beetle-browed man, bald-headed and bewhiskered. According to the records, lie spoke only once at the Parliament, giving on the opening day a short talk in which he made it clear that the broad and tolerant outlook of the Christian church in Sweden long antedated that of the Parliament of Religions. The conception that all religions have a measure of good in them was not new to him. We have reason to believe that von Bergen was one of those delegates who later developed a friendship with Swamiji, for we find that he attended a small and intimate luncheon in his company many months after the Parliament. But of this, more later.

The first information regarding the Evanston lectures was found in the Chicago Evening Journal of September 29, 1893, in the form of a preliminary announcement:

ALTRUISM OF CHRISTIANITY

It Will be Contrasted with Hindoo Ethics in Lectures at Evanston

Suami Vivekananda,a representative from India to the recent World’s Parliament of Religions,and Dr. Carl Von Bergen, a representative from Scandinavia, will give three lectures in Evanston beginning to-morrow evening. The other lectures will be given on Tuesday and Thursday evenings of next week in the Congregational Church. The subjects for Saturday evenings are “Altruism in Christianity ; illustrated by the life of Catherine of Siena, the herald of pure Christianity in the middle ages,” by Dr. Von Bergen; “Hindu Altruism,” by Suami Vivekananda. Tuesday evening, “Monism,” Suami Vivekananda; “Lord Shaftesbury, the most earnest philanthropist of our age,” Dr. Von Bergen. On this evening John W. Hutchinson will sing a number of the old time songs which have made him so famous. Thursday evening, “Huldine Beamish: the founder of the Edelweiss,” Dr. Von Bergen. “Reincarnation,” Suami Vivekananda.

The first announcements in the Evanston papers of this lecture course appeared in the Evanston Press and the Evanston Index, September 23, four days before the close of the Parliament. The announcement in the Press read as follows:

NEWS NOTES

Suami Vivekananda is the brilliant Hindu monk at the Parliament of religions. He has been the center of attraction ori all occasions, not only by his “Baltimore Oriole” dress, but by his beaming countenance, his perfect unconsciousness [sic] and his marvelous eloquence in expounding Hindu philosophy. This brilliant orator has been engaged to give a course of three lectures in EvanslorTlJeginning Saturday, Scpt. 30.

The announcement in the Evanston Index was much the same as that above, and I will not burden the reader with it here, except to say that the Index referred to Swamiji himself— not his dress—as “the Baltimore Oriole.” Notices in both papers appeared also on September 30, giving the additional information that admission to one lecture was fifty cents, and to the course of three, one dollar.

Since both Evanston papers were weeklies, it was not until Swamiji and Dr. von Bergen had completed their three lectures that the Evanston Press and the Evanston Index each ran a report on the series. The report in the Evanston Index of October 7, 1893, which is the more comprehensive, reads as follows (I have omitted those passages which relate only to Dr. Carl von Bergen):

RELIGIOUS LECTURES

At the Congregational Church, during the past week, there have been given a course of lectures which in nature much resembled the Religious Parliament which has just been completed. The lecturers were Dr. Carl von Bergen, of Sweden, and Suami Viveka-nanda, the Hindu monk. . . . Suami Vivekananda is a representative from India to the Parliament of Religions. He has attracted a great deal of attention on account of his unique attire in Mandarin colors, by his magnetic presence and by his brilliant oratory and wonderful exposition of Hindu philosophy. His stay in Chicago has been a continual ovation. The course of lectures was arranged to cover three evenings. [The lectures of Saturday and Tuesday evenings are listed without comment; then the article continues:] On Thursday evening Oct. 5, Dr. von Bergen spoke on “Huldine Beamish, the Founder of the Kings Daughters of Sweden” and “Reincarnation” was the subject treated by the Hindu monk. The latter was very interesting; the views being those that are not often heard in this part of the world. The doctrine of reincarnation of the soul, while comparatively new and little understood in this country, is well-known in the east, being the foundation of nearly all the religions of those people. Those that do not use it as dogma, do not say anything against it. The main point to be decided in regard to the doctrine is, as to whether we have had a past. We know that we have a present and feel sure •of a”future. Yet how can there be a present without a past? Modern science has proved that matter exists and continues to exist. Creation is merely a change in appearance. We are not sprung out of nothing. Some regard God as the common cause of everything and judge this a sufficient reason for existence. But in everything we must consider the phenomena; whence and from what matter springs. The same arguments that prove there is a future prove that there is a past. It is necessary that there should be causes other than God’s will. Heredity is not able to give sufficient cause. Some say that we are not conscious of a former existence. Many cases have been found where there are distinct reminiscences of a past. And here lies the germ of the theory. Because the Hindu is kind to dumb animals many believe that we believe in the reincarnation of souls in lower orders. They are not able to conceive of kindness to dumb animals being other than the result of superstition. An ancient Hindu priest defines religion as anything that lifts one up. Brutality is driven out, humanity gives way to divinity. The theory of incarnation does not confine man to this small earth. His soul can go to other, higher earths where he will be a loftier being, possessing, instead of five senses, eight, and continuing in this way he will at length approach the acme of perfection, divinity, and will be allowed to drink deep of oblivion in the “Islands of the Blest.”

I will not give here the report on the lectures that appeared in the Evanston Press of the same date, for nothing additional is to be learned from it except that “Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Herbert entertained the lecturers at her residence Thursday evening, and here the third lectures were delivered.”

Another evidence of Swamiji’s lecturing outside of Chicago comes from the letter, given in the first chapter, which he wrote to Mrs. Tannatt Woods on October 10, 1893. “…Just now” Swamiji wrote, “I am lecturing about Chicago—and am doing very well—it is ranging from 30 to 80 dollars a lecture . . . Yesterday I returned from Streator where I got 87 dollars for a lecture. I have engagements every day this week. . . “

Streator is a relatively small city, ninety miles southwest of Chicago. To judge from the announcement which appeared in the Streator Daily Free Press of October 5, 1893, the prices of admission to Swamiji’s lecture, delivered in the Plumb Opera House, were twenty-five cents for the first floor and thirty-five cents for the balcony! By a mathematical process, and allowing for the percentage taken by the manager of the house, one can arrive at the conclusion that Swamiji’s audience consisted of approximately six hundred people. But although the lecture was well attended, the Streator Daily Free Press of October 9 ran the following somewhat dreary review:

VIVEKANANDA

The lecture of this celebrated Hindoo at the Opera House, Saturday night, was very interesting. By comparative philology, he sought to establish the long-admitted relationship between the Aryan races and their descendants in the new world. He mildly defended the caste system of India which keeps three-fourths of the people in utter and humiliating subjection, and boasted that the India of today was the same India that had watched for centuries the meteoric nations of the world flash across the horizon and sink into oblivion. In common with the people, he loves the past. He lives not for self, but for God. In his country a premium is placed on beggary and tramps, though not so distinguished in his lecture. When the meal is prepared, they wait for some mail to come along who is first served, then the animals, the servants, the man of the house and lastly the woman of the household. Boys are taken at 10 years of age and are kept by professors for a period of ten to twenty years, educated and sent forth to resume their former occupations or to engage in a life of endless wandering, preaching, and praying, taking along only that which is given them to eat and wear, but never touching money. Vivekananda is of the latter class. Men approaching old age withdraw from the world, and after a period of study and prayer, when they feel themselves sanctified, they also go forward spreading the gospel. He observed that leisure was necessary for intellectual development and scored Americans for not educating the Indians whom Columbus found in a state of savagery. In this he exhibited a lack of knowledge of conditions. His talk was lamentably short and much was left unsaid of seeming greater importance than much that was said.

It is clear from the above report that the American press, for one reason or another, did not always give Swamiji an enthusiastic reception.

To date, these reports are all we have been able to gather in connection with his side trips from Chicago, although undoubtedly there are many more waiting to be found.

II

In regard to Swamiji’s state of mind during this period, the reader has gathered a litde from his letters to Professor Wright. Additional new material indicates what a blessed state it was—a state which, despite his incessant activity, was one of perfect peace. How fortunate were those who knew him at this time, for his inner serenity was such that it shone out as a blessing and a revelation. An excerpt from a newly discovered letter written to Swamiji by Mrs. Hale is illustrative of this fact. Although this letter was written long after the Parliament, it will not be amiss to quote here the following passage in which Mrs. Hale recalls Sw’amiji as

. . . the great and 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 of harmony and purity, thereby drawing all souls to himself.

One look at a hitherto unpublished photograph which has recently come to our hands is enough to show us something of what Mrs. Hale meant, for one cannot fail to be moved by the childlike tenderness of Swamiji’s appearance, and by the wonderful peace and calm of his expression. Inasmuch as this picture was copyrighted in Washington by the photographer, it was evidently taken after Swamiji had become famous, that is, after the first day of the Parliament. It has come to us along with a group of five other photographs, all of which, there is reason to believe, were taken in September of 1893, and all of which have been published. One of these is no doubt familiar to the reader ; it is that in which Swamiji stands with arms folded across his chest and which was used as a colored poster during Parliament days. All six pictures are autographed by Swamiji and inscribed with English translations from Sanskrit mottoes, some with the original Sanskrit written in Bengali characters. The mottoes are as follows:

1. Ajaramaravat prajnah vidyam arthancha chintayet Grihita-iva kesheshu mrityuna dharmam acharet

When in search of knowledge or prosperity think that you would never have death or disease, and when worshipping God think that death’s hand is in your hair.

2.    Eka eva suhrid dharma

nidhanepyanuyati yah

Virtue is the only friend which follows us even beyond the grave.

Everything else ends with death.

Vivekananda

3.    One infinite pure and holy—beyond thought beyond qualities I bow down to thee

Swami Vivekananda

4.    Samata sarva-bhuteshu etanmuktasya

lakshanam

Equality in all beings this is the sign of the free

Vivekananda

5.    Thou act the only treasure in this world

Vivekananda

6.    Thou art the father the lord the mother the husband and love

Swami Vivekananda

It is through the kindness of Swami Vishwananda, who is in charge of the Vivekananda Vedanta Society in Chicago, that these photographs and other invaluable material regarding Swamiji have come to our hands, and it is with his assent that we are making them known. The story of how this material was discovered by Swami Vishwananda is worth telling here, for it is an example of those coincidences that occur so frequently in matters concerning Swamiji. Swami Vishwananda tells us that a young man, unconnected with Vedanta, had received from his grandmother a bundle of unpublished letters, photographs and other material, all pertaining to Swami Vivekananda. Knowing that his grandmother had cherished them, the \oung man had kept them, and indeed might still possess them, or perhaps by this time have discarded them, had it not been that a friend of his was a student of Swami Vishwananda. How this friend came to know’ of the bundle of old documents is not known, but one day she told Swami Vishwananda of its existence. The Swami forthwith visited the young man and found, with what joy we can imagine, a veritable feast of hitherto unknown material! The young man gladly gave him the bundle, which had originally belonged, the Swami tells us, to Miss Isabelle McKindley, a niece of Mr. and Mrs. Hale. It is discoveries such as this which give us hope that eventually more hidden material regarding Swamiji will come “to light, slowly pushing its way up through the years.

But to return to Swamiji as he was during the Chicago days following the Parliament. Perhaps the clearest indication of his exalted state is given in a letter that Swami Vishwananda received in 1989 from Sarat Chandra Chakravarti, a disciple of Swamiji whose diary is published in “The Complete Works” A translated portion of this letter reads as follows:

. . . Swamiji once told me that one moonlight night when he was on the shore of Lake Michigan his mind began to merge in Brahman. Suddenly he saw Sri Ramakrishna and he remembered the Work for which he had come to this world, and then his mind came down and again turned toward the fulfillment of his mission. I recorded this in my diary, but I did not think it necessary to make it public; therefore I have not published it as yet. I am letting only you know…

In what transcendent spiritual state Swamiji lived at the very time when the world was his for the asking! The doors of the rich, the socially prominent, the brilliant, were all open to him, and everywhere he was in demand. But Swamiji’s difficulty, it would seem, was not to lift his mind above the world that pressed about him on all sides but, for the sake of his work, to hold it down.

During the months Swamiji remained in Chicago after the Parliament of Religions, he must have been the house guest of various friends. He himself writes of this period:    “Many of the handsomest houses in this city are open to me. All the time I am living as a guest of somebody or other.” As we know, one of the homes that was always open to him and where he stayed both during and after the Parliament was that of Mr. and Mrs. John B. Lyon at 262 Michigan Avenue. Unfortunately, however, we do not know at the present time who Swamiji’s other hosts were, but from the fact that a letter dated November 19, 189.‘J, which he wrote to Mrs. Tannatt Woods (see Chapter One) was written on stationery bearing the letterhead: George W. Hale, 541 Dearborn Avenue, Chicago, we can judge that he was a guest of the Hale family for at least part of the time. The Hales were excellent hosts, treating him from the first as a cherished member of the family and understanding him, perhaps not fully, but far better than most.

The Hale home was a block and a half from Lincoln Park, and there Swamiji sometimes went to sit in the sun and open air. I have recently heard of a touching and revealing incident that took place during these outings. It seems that each day as Swamiji sat in the park, a young woman and a little girl six years old would pass by on their way to the market, une day the woman, no doubt convinced that the young Hindu was kind and trustworthy, asked him if she might leave her child in his charge while she went about her marketing. Swamiji assured her that she might, and thenceforth each morning that they met in the park, Swamiji took the little girl into his care. But the story does not end here. When the child had grown to fifteen or sixteen her mother came upon a picture of Swamiji, of whose fame she had by that time learned, and showing it to her daughter, asked, “Do you remember your friend ?” She remembered ; for who knowing Swamiji even at the age of six could forget? Later, after she had married and moved to Philadelphia, the memory of Swamiji again became vivid in her mind, drawing her to the spiritual life. She became a student of Swami Akhilananda, who used to visit that city now and then to meet with a group of devotees. How many small happenings such as that of a mother leaving her child in his charge must have taken place throughout Swamiji’s visit to America, how many chance contacts he had with people whose path was led upward through his touch or glance, we can only guess.

The Hale family, of whom more later, were perhaps the most fortunate of all; for, as is known, not only was Swamiji their guest from time to time, but he made their home his headquarters during almost all of 1894, before the pivot of his activities moved eastward to the Atlantic Coast. It was on George W. Hale’s letter paper and thus, presumably, during one of his stays in the latter’s home, that Swamiji jotted down in pencil a series of notes on the subjects of reason, faith and love, which have recently come to light. Unfortunately the date of the manuscript cannot be accurately determined, but inasmuch as Swamiji wrote these notes *hi the sanctuary that the Hales offered him in Chicago, I think their reproduction here will not be out of place. I am giving them exactly as they appear in the original:

Reason—has its limits—its base— its degeneration. The walls round it—

Agnosticism. Atheism. But must not stop The beyond is acting upon influencing us every

moment—the sky the stars acting upon us—even those not seen. Therefore must go beyond—reason alone can’t go—finite can not get at the infinite

Faith its degeneration when alone—bigotry f ana t icism—sec tariani sm. N arrow ing finite v. can not get to the infinite Sometimes gain in intensity but looses [sic] in extensity—and in bigots & fanatics become worship of his own pride & vanity

Is there no other way—there is Love it never degenerates—peaceful softening ever widening—the universe is too small for its expansivencss.

We can not define it we can only trace it through its development and describe its surroundings

It is at first—what the gravitation is to the external world—a tendency to unification forms and conventionalities are its death.

Worship through forms—methods—services forms—up to then no love.

When love comes method dies.

Human language and human forms

God as father, God as mother, God as

the lover—Surata-vardhanam etc. Solomon’s Song of

Songs—Dependence and independence

Love Love—

Love the chaste wife—Anasuya Sita— rioi as hard dry duty but as ever pleasing love—Sita worship—

The madness of Love—God intoxicated man The allegory of Radha—misunderstood The restriction more increase—

Lust is the death of love

Self is the death of love

individual to general

Concrete to abstract—to absolute

The praying Mahomedan and the girl

The Sympathy—Kavir—

The Christian null from whose hands blood came The Mahomedan Saint

Every particle seeking its own compliment [sic]

When it finds that it is at rest

Every man seeking—happiness—8c stability

The search is real but the objects are themselves

but happiness is coming to them momentary at least

through the search of these objects.

The only object unchangable and the only compliment

of character and aspirations of the human Soul is God 

Love is struggle of a human Soul to find its compliment its stable equilibrium its infinite rest

While Swamiji was in Chicago, word of his great and saving spiritual power spread from person to person, and very likely many came to him for private interviews seeking help and guidance. A story of one such interview has been recounted by Mme. Emma Calv£ in her autobiography, “My Life” and subsequently reproduced in “The Life of Swami Vivekananda.” But Mme. Calve evidently did not choose to tell the whole story in her book. We are fortunate enough to have in our possession an account of this same meeting as she told it to a sympathetic friend long before she wrote her memoirs. It is to Mme. Paul Verdier, of Paris and San Francisco, that we are indebted for this earlier and more complete version, for it was she to whom Calvl confided the following story and who shortly after hearing it jotted it down.

Apparently it was in March of 1894, when Emma Galv£ was visiting Chicago with the Metropolitan Opera Company, that she first met Swamiji. She was at the peak of her career, having recently had a tremendouSTSuccess in Europe and New York with her dramatic interpretation of the role of Carmen. The world was at her feet; she was entertained, as are most celebrities, b} the cream of society, and had become friendly with whomever Swamiji was staying with at this time (most likely not the Hales). But Calv£, the toast of two continents, was possessed of a temperament that rarely makes for happiness. Tempestuous, headstrong and sensuous, she was, it would seem, frequently involved in emotional attachments. The most recent and most deeply felt of these had just come to an unhappy end, leaving her desolate. Her only comfort was her daughter, who had accompanied her to Chicago and upon whom she lavished her love. I shall let Mme. Verdier’s notes tell the rest of the story, for they more closely approximate Mme. Calve’s own words:

She [Calve] told me that one evening at the opera where she was singing Carmen her voice had never been so beautiful, and although she felt nervous going to the theatre, she had after the first act a tremendous success.

During the first intermission she suddenly felt terribly depressed and thought she would not continue the second act, but with a great effort she succeeded in getting ready, and although she had the impression she would not be able to sing, she sang magnificently. Right after the second act, coming back to her dressing room she almost collapsed and asked the manager to announce she was ill. She was more depressed than before and had difficulty in breathing. The manager and people around her insisted so, that finally she continued and was almost carried to the stage for the last act. She told me that at that minute she made the greatest effort of her life to finish the performance. She also said that it was the day she sang her best and the public gave her a tremendous ovation. She ran to her dressing room without waiting for the applause, and when she saw several people and the manager waiting for her with sad faces, she knew something tragic had happened.

The tragedy was that her daughter, who had been in a house of a friend that evening, was dead, having been burned to death during the performance of Carmen. Calv6 collapsed.

Then came the period of days during which she wanted to commit suicide. Her friend Mrs. X was constantly with her, trying to comfort her, asking, begging her to come to her house to see Swamiji. Calve constantly refused. She told me that her only thought was to commit suicide by throwing herself in the lake. Three different times she left her house to drown herself and took the direction of the lake, and each time as though in a daze she found herself on the road to Swamiji’s house. She said it was like awaking from a dream. And each time she came back home. Finally, the fourth or fifth time, she found herself on the threshold of her friend’s house, the butler opening the door. She went in and sat in a deep chair in the living room. She was there for a while as in a dream, she said, when she heard a voice coming from the next room saying, “Come, my child. Don’t be afraid.” And automatically she got up and entered into the study where Swamiji was sitting behind a large table-desk.

From here on the story as it is quoted in “The Life” is substantially the same as that told to Mme. Verdier, and therefore I will not repeat it. The reader knows how Swamiji brought peace to Mme. Calve’s grief-strickcn heart, and that for the rest of her life she was grateful to him.

There is yet another story which Mme. Calve told regarding this period of Swamiji’s life. Unfortunately we are not in a position to authenticate it, but it is not in essence an unlikely story, and at the risk of providing material for the start of a legend I think that I should let Swamiji’s followers know of it. The story’ is related in Mme. Verdier’s journal from notes taken during conversations with Mme. Calve and reads as follows:

Mr. X, in whose home Swamiji was staying in Chicago, was a partner or an associate in some business with John D. Rockefeller. Many times John D. heard his friends talking about tjjis extraordinary and wonderful Hindu monk who was staying with them, and many times he had been invited to meet Swamiji but, for one reason or another, always refused. At that time Rockefeller was not yet at the peak of his fortune, but was already powerful and strong-willed, very difficult to handle and a hard man to advise.

But one day, although he did not want to meet Swamiji, he was pushed to it by an impulse and went directly to the house of his friends, brushing aside the butler who opened the door and sayipg that he wanted to see the Hindu monk.

The butler ushered him into the living room, and, not waiting to be announced, Rockefeller entered into Swamiji’s adjoining study and was much surprised, I presume, to see Swamiji behind his writing table not even lifting his eyes to see who had entered.

After a while, as with Calve, Swamiji told Rockefeller much of his past that was not known to any but himself, and made him understand that the money he had already accumulated was not his, that he was only a channel and that his duty was to do good to the world —that God had given him all his wealth in order that he might have an opportunity to help and do good to people.

Rockefeller was annoyed that anyone dared to talk to him that way and tell him what to do. He left the room in irritation, not even saying goodbye. But about a week after, again without being announced, he entered Swamiji’s study and, finding him the same as before, threw on his desk a paper which told of his plans to donate an enormous sum of money toward the financing of a public institution.

“Well, there you are,” he said. “You must be satisfied now, and you can thank me for it.”

Swamiji didn’t even lift his eyes, did not move. Then taking the paper, he quietly read it, saying:    “It is for you to thank me.” That was all. This was Rockefeller’s first large donation to the public welfare.

The reader can make of this what he will. Except for the fact that it was about this time that Rockefeller entered upon his career of philanthropy, there is nothing in the published accounts of his life to corroborate the story that he was inspired by Swamiji. But on the other hand, this is so intimate a story that it is unlikely it would find its way into the biographies of a financier. We do know that in his own way Rockefeller was interested in religion, and once, almost as though echoing Swamiji, he said, explaining the reason behind his great philan thropies:    “There is more to life than the accumulation of money. Money is only a trust in one’s hands. To use it improperly is a great sin. The best way to prepare for the end of life is to live for others. That is what I am trying to do.” (“John D. Rockefeller” by B. F. Winkleman, page 213.)

A definite picture of Swamiji’s life in Chicago begins now to emerge. We sec him in the full bloom of his youth, his face shining with a heavenly light, fulfilling many lecture engagements, and no doubt many social engagements, taking a keen interest in Western life and institutions, and explaining India’s life and culture in their true significance. That fraction of his mind with which he attended to the world was brilliantly alert— indeed, was in itself far more than a match for the keenest intellect. But we see also that this fraction was informed and illumined by a far larger part that lay quiet and untouched beneath the surface, always absorbed in God, ready to pour out blessings upon and alter the lives of those who came to him for help. How often Swamiji verged upon nirvikalpa samadhi, only to be drawn back by Sri Ramakrishna, or by his own love and compassion for man, in order that he might fulfill his mission here, we cannot know ; but we can assume that he always lived on the borderline between the relative and the Absolute, as a prophet of his supreme eminence must.

III

It is still not known exactly when Swamiji felt it advisable to enlist with a lecture bureau. Unfortunately we cannot be much more precise than “The Life” which tells us that “it must have been in the very late atttumn or the early winter months when, to use his own expression, he ‘began to whirl to and fro.’ ” Although it must indeed have been around this time that the lecture tour started, Swamiji used the expression “I was whirling to and fro” at a much later date and in connection with his rapid travel between New York and Boston. He actually tells very little about his mid-Western “whirlings,” or when and why he had joined a lecture bureau. But if his purpose was to broadcast the truth regarding Indian religion, culture and customs, which had been so systematically and thoroughly misrepresented to this country by Christian missionaries, and if he felt that he must earn money both for his own support and for the work in India, then to engage himself with a lecture bureau would seem the logical step for him to take. Then, as now, lecture bureaus, concert agencies, impresarios, etc. were necessary evils to anyone who would come before the general public throughout America, there being no other way to make coordinated engagements in many towns. The expedience of this move may have occurred to Swamiji as early as November 2, for in a letter written on that date lie speaks of the fact that “a Christian lady from Poona, Miss Sorabji, and the Jain representative, Mr. Gandhi, are going to remain longer in the country and make lecture tours” From this we can gather that while Swamiji had not yet made any definite plans, he may have been considering the advantages of enlisting with a lecture bureau.

One is surprised to learn, however, that when he did engage himself he signed a three-year contract! It is in a sense difficult to understand this, for although Swamiji was uncertain of the future at this time, he had little intention of remaining in America for three years, and certainly would not have wanted to commit himself to do so. It is also difficult to understand why no one warned him that almost as a matter of course attempts would be made to exploit him, unless it were that his friends were as naive in this respect as was he. In any case, if one is to-believe what one reads in newspapers, he did sign a long-term contract. This information is to be found in the Appeal–Avalanche of January 21, 1894, a Memphis, Tennessee, newspaper. “He” this paper says, meaning “Swami Vive Kananda,” “is under contract with the ‘Slayton Lyceum Bureau/ of Chicago, to fill a three-years’ engagement in this country.” In this connection it might be mentioned that in the “Memoirs of Sister Christine” as published in the February 1931 issue of Prabuddha Bharala, it is said, “after the Parliament of Religions, Swami Vivekananda was induced to place himself under the direction of Pond’s Lecture Bureau and make a lecture tour of the United States.” There is, however, no record of a Pond’s Lecture Bureau having existed in Chicago in the 1890’s and “Pond’s” may have been merely another way of designating the Slayton Lyceum Bureau, which did exist. The correct name of the bureau with which Swamiji enlisted is of no little consequence, for consider how valuable would be the files of that bureau if found! Perhaps among them, still undestroyed, is a list of all the towns Swamiji visited while under contract and the dates on which he spoke. In trying to follow his footsteps across America scarcely a greater find could be conceived. However, little by little, even without this help we are able to fill in the gaps—although, to be sure, many remain.

One thing that should perhaps be of some consolation to those who would like to see all the gaps filled in the story of Swamiji’s life, is the fact that his brother monks and friends in India had an even more difficult time than we in attempting to keep track of him. By way of illustrating this, let me give here a letter of some poignancy, written at the direction of those whose hearts ached to hear of the doings and triumphs of their beloved Swamiji in this strange land. The letter was addressed to Thos. Cook and Sons, Calcutta:

Dear Sirs—

Swami Vivekananda
Care Mr. Geo. W. Hale
541 Dearborn Ave,  Chicago

The above Hindu monk has been travelling under Messrs Tho. Cook 8c Sons Agency. Your Bombay people arranged last year for his passage to America where he went to represent the Hindu religion at the Parliament of Religions held in connection with the World’s Fair at Chicago—Swami Vivekananda is reported to have delivered several lectures in America, a few of which only are reproduced or noticed in the Indian papers—But as the extracts and notices that appeared here are believed to be unsatisfactory, the brother monks and admirers of Swamiji are anxious to obtain all the American papers or cuttings thereof as most convenient containing all the speeches that have been delivered in and about Chicago, and in fact wherever he spoke in America, these to include all newspaper notices or criticisms both for and against that are known to have appeared, but not to include the Report of the Parliament of Religions issued by the Secretary of the Chicago Exhibition, a copy of which has already been secured from here. Under the circumstances the undersigned on behalf of the brother ihonks and admirers of Swami Vivekananda shall be very much obliged if you will kindly arrange, owing to the excellent facilities you possess on a/c of your numerous agencies and branches, with your people at Chicago for the collection of papers and pamphlets named above together with one or two copies of photos if they are in circulation, and have them all forwarded to your care, the express thereof shall be paid by Swamiji’s admirers through the undersigned. Further the only address known of Swami Vivekananda is noted as above. It is quite possible that Swamiji has or will have left the place ere this reaches your Chicago Agent, therefore I beg to ask you to kindly write and inform your Chicago Agent to put himself in communication with Mr. Hale or any other party regarding the movements of Swami Vivekananda, who according to the rules of Hindu Sannyasi (ascetic) will not write and inform of his whereabouts, which information however is so anxiously looked for by his admirers and brother monks—

10-1 Old Court House St.    Yours obediently

Calcutta 28th March/94    Kali Krishna Dutta

Cashier & Accountant Thos Cook &: Sons Calcutta

Until quite recently it has seemed evident that Swamiji did not communicate with his brother monks until he had been in America for over seven months, or until March 19, 1894, which is the date given on the published version of what is clearly his first letter to any one of them. However, in the book “Swami Vivekananda, a Forgotten Chapter of His Life” by Beni Shanker Sharma (Oxford Book & Stationery Co., Calcutta, 1963), one finds that on February 18, 1894, Swami Ramakrishnananda wrote to Munshi Jagmohanlal, the private secretary of the Maharaja of Khetri, giving him a resume of the first, recently-received letter from Swamiji. Swami Ramakrishnananda’s resume goes into some detail, and there can be no doubt that it refers to the same letter as that which has all along been dated March 19 ; nor can there be any doubt that this letter was written not in March but probably around the middle of January. Indeed, the description it contains of the bitter cold of the American winter, the snow and ice and the frozen rivers, should in itself have led us to question the correctness of the date assigned to it.

But even though this letter was written in January and not in March, many months had passed since Swamiji had left India, months during which he had written at least three times to his Madrasi disciples, and the question remains why he had waited so long before communicating with his brothers. Had he grown out of the habit of writing to them through a long separation? Or was he not yet prepared to offer them the new program which was taking shape in his mind, wanting perhaps to initiate it through his own disciples? Or, again, was he waiting for a divine command before asking his brothers to follow his ideas? Yet another and more simple explanation presents itself: during this time most of the monastic disciples of Sri Ramakrishna were still wandering through India and were as hard to trace as was Swamiji himself. The difficulty with this answer is that when Swamiji wanted to communicate his plans to his brother monks, he found their dispersion over India no particular drawback. It was possibly in April of 1894 that he wrote to Swami Shivananda asking that he call all the monks back to the Math to begin work. Shortly after receiving this letter, Swami Shivananda met Swami Brahmananda and Swami Turiyananda in Lucknow and relayed Swamiji’s request to them. Swami Turiyananda returned to Calcutta in August, while Swami Brahmananda went first to Brindavan, not leaving there for Calcutta until November or December. Gradually all returned. During the first nine or ten months of 1894 Swamiji’s published letters to his brothers are not many. From November forward, however, we find him writing frequently. These letters did not give much news or his external me, it is true, but they gave something better—the power of his inspiration and vision that was to revolutionize the concept of monasticism in India.

I

The first definite knowledge we have of the date on which Swamiji left Illinois to widen his field of activity is contained in a letter which he wrote to Mrs. Tannatt Woods on November 19, 1893. This letter was included in the first chapter of this book, and the reader will perhaps remember that Swamiji said in it, “I am starting to-morrow for Madison and Minneapolis.” This departure from Chicago marked the beginning of Swamiji’s famous and important lecture tour of the Midwest and South, which lasted until April of 1894. But although the tour is famous and important. I have been able to gather information about Swamiji’s lectures in only four cities prior to his visit to Detroit in February of 1894. I have found that he visited not only Madison, Wisconsin, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, in November of 1893 but, in the same month, Des Moines, Iowa. These three cities constituted the first listings on his Midwestern itinerary. Another discovery is that Swamiji visited Memphis, Tennessee, in January, 1894. The new information regarding his visits to these towns still leaves a large blank in our knowledge, but I believe it will nevertheless give a more or less representative idea of the tour as a whole.

As seen above, Swamiji left Chicago on November 20 for Madison, a hundred and thirty miles northwest. And, as one learns from the following-somewhat meager report in the Wisconsin State Journal of November 21, it was on the evening of the same day that he lectured there:

GAVE AN INTERESTING LECTURE

The lecture at the Congregational church last night by the celebrated Hindoo monk, Vivekananda, was an extremely interesting one, and contained much of sound philosophy and good religion. Pagan though he be, Christianity may well follow many or his teachings. His creed is as wide as the universe, taking in all religions, and accepting truth wherever it may be found. Bigotry and superstition and idle ceremony, he declared, have no place in “the religions of India”

From Madison, Swamiji traveled some two hundred and fifty miles farther northwest to Minneapolis, Minnesota, a city with a population of about a hundred and sixty-five thousand and of no little importance in the Midwest. His first lecture there was reported by the Minneapolis Star of November 25:

THE HINDOO RELIGION.

Its Principles and Truths Set Forth in a Clear and Forceful Manner in a Lecture by Swami Vive Kananda.

“Brahminism” in all its subtle attraction, because of its embodiment of ancient and truthful principles, was the subject which held an audience in closest attention last evening at the First Unitarian Church, while Swami Vive Kananda expounded the Hindoo faith. It was an audience which included thoughtful women and men, for the lecturer had been invited by the “Peripatetics” and among the friends who shared the privilege with them were ministers of varied denominations, as well as students and scholars. Vive Kananda is a Brahmin priest, and he occupied the platform in his native garb, with caftan on head, orange colored coat confined at the waist with a red sash, and red nether garments.

He presented his faith in all sincerity, speaking slowly and clearly, convincing his hearers by quietness of speech rather than by rapid action. His words were carefully weighed, and each carried its meaning direct.

He offered the simplest truths of the Hindoo religion, and while he said nothing harsh about Christianity, he touched upon it in such a manner as to place the faith of Brahma before all. The all-pervading thought and leading principle of the Hindoo religion is the inherent divinity of the soul; the soul is perfect, and religion is the manifestation of divinity already existing in man.

The present is merely a line of demarkation between the past and future, and of the two tendencies in man, if the good preponderates he will move to a higher sphere, if the evil has power, he degenerates. These two are continually at work within him ; what elevates him is virtue, that which degenerates is evil.

Kananda will speak at the First Unitarian Church tomorrow morning.

It should perhaps be mentioned here that while Swamijt “had been invited by the ‘Peripatetics,’ ” he nevertheless might at this time have been engaged by a lecture bureau ; for it is a function of lecture bureaus to arrange precisely such engagements. On the other hand, he may still have been on his own. The next Minneapolis report appeared on the front page of the Minneapolis Journal of November 27:

AN ORIENTAL VIEW

Livami Vivekananda Addresses a Minneapolis Audience.

Mercenaries in Religion

In this Way He Characterizes the Western Nations—He Tells About the Religions of India.

The Unitarian church was crowded yesterday morning by an audience anxious to learn something of eastern religious thought as outlined by Swami Vivekananda, a Brahmin priest, who was prominent in the Parliament of Religions at Chicago last summer. The distinguished representative of the Brahmin faith was brought to Minneapolis by the Peripatetic Club, and he addressed that body last Friday evening. He was induced to remain until this weex, in order that he might deliver the address yesterday.

Vivekananda is a typical Uindeu, dark-skinned, well rounded features, and a flashing eye that gives evidence of a quick intellect. He appeared in his picturesque native dress. He occupied the platform with Dr. H. M. Simmons, the pastor, the opening prayer was sung, Vivekanandai following the lines closely, and then Dr. Simmons read from Paul’s lesson on faith, hope and charity, and “the greatest of these is charity” supplementing that reading by a selection from the Brahmin scripture which teaches the same lesson, and also a selection from the Moslem faith, and poems from the Hindu literature, all of which are in harmony with Paul’s utterances.

After a second hymn Swami Vivekanda was introduced. He stepped to the edge of the platform and at once had his audience interested by the recital of a Hindu story. He said in excellent English:

“I will tell you a story of five blind men. There was a procession in a village in India, and all the people turned out to see the procession, and specially the gaily caparisoned elephant. The people were delighted, and as the five blind men could not see, they determined to touch the elephant that they might acquaint themselves with its form. They were given the privilege, and after the procession had passed, they returned home together with the people, and they began to talk about the elephant. ‘It was just like a wall/ said one. ‘No it wasn’t/ said another, ‘it was like a piece of rope/ ‘You are mistaken/ said a third, ‘I felt him and it was just like a serpent.’ The discussion grew excited and the fourth declared the elephant was like a pillow. The argument soon broke into more angry expressions and the five blind men took to fighting. Along came a man with two eyes, and he says, ‘My friends, what is the matter?’ The disputation was explained, whereupon the new comer said, ‘Men, you are all right: the trouble is you touched the elephant at different points. The wall was the side, the rope was the tail, the serpent was the trunk and the toes were the pillow. Stop your quarreling ; you are all right, only you have been viewing the elephant from different standpoints.*’

Religion, he said, had become involved in such a quarrel. The people of the West thought they had the only religion of God, and the people of the East held the same prejudice. Both were wrong ; God was in every religion.

There were many bright criticisms on Western thought. The Christians were characterized as having a “shop-keeping religion.”‘ They were always begging of God—“Oh, God, give me this and give me that; Oh, God, do this and do that.” The Hindu couldn’t understand this. He thought it wrong to be begging of God. Instead of begging, the religious man should give. The Hindu believed in giving to God, to his fellows, instead of asking God to give to them. He had observed that the people of the West, very many of them, thought a great deal of God, so long as they got along all right, but when reverse came, then God was forgotten: not so with the Hindu, who had come to look upon God as a being of love. The Hindu faith recognized the motherhood of God as well as the fatherhood, because the former was a better fulfillment of the idea of love. The Western Christian would work all the week for the dollar, and when he succeeded he would pray, “Oh, God, we thank thee for giving us this benefit,” and then he would put all the money into his pocket; the Hindu would make the ottoney and then give it to God by helping the poor and the less fortunate. And so comparisons were made between the ideas of the West and the ideas of the East. In speaking of God, Vivekanandi said in substance:    “You people of the

West think you have God. What is it to have God? If you have Him, why is it that so much criminality exists, that nine out of ten people are hypocrites? Hypocrisy cannot exist where God is. You have your palaces for the worship of God, and you attend them in part for a time once a week,but now few go to worship God.It is the fashion in the West to attend church, and many of you attend for no other reason. Have you then, you people of the West, any right to lay exclusive claim to the possession of God?”

Here the speaker was interrupted by spontaneous applause. He proceeded:    “We of the Hindu faith believe in worshipping God for love’s sake, not for what he gives us, but because God is love, and no nation, no people, no religion has God until it is willing to worship Him for love’s sake. You of the West are practical in business, practical in great inventions, but we of the East are practical in religion. You make commerce your business ; we make religion our business. If you will come to India and talk with the workman in the fields, you will find he has no opinion on politics. He knows nothing of politics. But you talk to him of religion, and the humblest knows about monotheism, deism and all the isms of religion. You ask:

“ ‘What government do you live under?’ and he will reply: ‘I don’t know. I pay my taxes, and that’s all I know about it.’ I have talked with your laborers, your farmers, and I find that in politics they are all posted. They are either Democrat or Republican, and they know whether they prefer free silver or a gold standard. But you talk to them of religion ; they are like the Indian fanner, they don’t know, they attend such a church, but they don’t know what it believes ; they just pay their pew rent, and that’s all they know about it—or God.”

The superstitions of India were admitted, “but what nation doesn’t have them?” he asked. In summing up, he held that the nations had been looking at God as a monopoly. All nations had God, and any impulse for good was God. The western people, as well as the eastern people, must learn to “want God,” and this “want” was compared to the man under water, struggling for air he wanted it, he couldn’t live without it. When the people of the West “wanted” God in that manner then they would be welcome in India, because the missionaries “fould then come to them with God, not with the idea that India knows not God, but with love in their hearts and not dogma.

From Minneapolis, without even a day’s rest, Swamiji traveled to Des Moines, Iowa—a distance of well over 250 miles —and gave an informal talk on the afternoon of November 27 and a formal lecture that evening. This lecture had been announced somewhat breathlessly by the Des Moines News as follows:

The lecture event of the season will take place to-night at the Central Church of Christ when the Hindoo Monk will deliver his lecture on “The Hindoo Religion.” No thinker can afford to miss it.

On November 28, this same paper ran three items regarding Swamiji, one of which covered the informal talk and reception of the afternoon of the 27th. This I shall quote first:

On Monday afternoon, a small company were invited to the home of Dr. and Mrs. H. O. Breeden on Woodland Avenue, to meet the Hindoo monk, Swami Vivekananda, whose brilliant intellect made him one of the prime favorites of the parliament of religions, and whose lectures in Des Moines may be said to be of the era-making type. The distinguished oriental first gave an informal talk, in costume, on the manners and customs of India, and afterwards submitted to a running fire of questions from the guests, his witty and often sarcastic retorts proving highly entertaining.

The report of the evening’s lecture was given on the same page as the above. Although in spots, as will he seen, the reporter woefully failed to follow Swamiji’s argument regarding conversion, he captured enough of it to enable the reader who is familiar with Swamiji’s thought to comprehend his meaning. It is apparent that this was an exceptional lecture, embodying ideas which Swamiji did not often express in quite this same way:

Swami Vivekananda, the talented scholar from the far-off India, spoke at the Central church last night. He was a representative of his country and creed at the recent parliament of religions assembled in Chicago during the world’s fair. Rev. H. O. Rrecden introduced the speaker to the audience. He arose and after bowing to his audience, commenced his lecture, the subject of which was “Hindoo Religion.” His lecture was not confined to any line of thought but consisted more of some of his own philosophical views relative to his religion and others. He holds that one must embrace all the religions to become the perfect Christian. What is not found in one religion is supplied by another. They are all right and necessary for the true Christian. When you send a missionary to our country he becomes a Hindoo Christian and I a Christian Hindoo. I have often been asked in this country if I am going to try to convert the people here. I take this for an insult. I do not believe in this idea of conversion. To-day we have a sinful man ; tomorrow according to your idea he is converted and by and by attains unto holiness. Whence comes this change? How do you explain it? The roan has not a new soul for the soul must die. You say he is changed by God. God is perfect, all powerful and is purity itself. Then after this man is converted he is that same God minus the purity he gave that man to become holy. There is in our country two words which have an altogether different meaning than they do in this country. They are “religion” and “sect.” We hold that religion embraces all religions. We tolerate everything but intoleration. Then there is that word “sect.” Here it embraces those sweet people who wrap themselves up in their mantle of charity and say, “We are right ; you are wrong.” It reminds me of the story of the two frogs. A frog was born in a well and lived its whole life in that well. One day a frog from the sea fell in^that well and they commenced to talk about the sea. The frog whose home was in the well asked his visitor how large the sea was, but was unable to get an intelligent answer. Then the at home frog jumped from one comer of the well to another and asked his visitor if the sea was that large. He said yes. The frog jumped again and said, “Is the sea that large?” and receiving an affirmative reply, he said to himself, “This frog must be a liar; I will put him out of my well.” That is the way with these sects. They seek to eject and trample those who do not believe as they do.

Swamiji’s next lecture in Des Moines was announced in this same paper, the Des Moines News of November 28:

“Reincarnation” will be the subject of Swami Vive-kananda’s lecture at the Central Christian church tonight. Those who heard the gifted Hindu monk last night will be glad of a second opportunity and those who did not are to be congratulated on the fact that they can still hear him. Do not fail to go.

Regrettably, no account is given in the Des Moines papers of this lecture on reincarnation. But on November 29 there is a short editorial in the Des Moines Daily News which shows that it was favorably received:

Dr. Breeden has conferred a real intellectual benefit upon this community by giving it an opportunity to hear the representatives of the Greek and Hindu religions discourse upon their favorite themes. There is a good deal of philistinism in America, and the west, which feels less of the influence of our foreign relations than is perceptible at the seaboard, is peculiarly liable to become a little narrow and intolerant in its excessive Americanism. The archbishop of Zante and the Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda, have shown thinking people in Des Moines how possible it is to honestly view the problems of life from a point of view different from that of a busy, practical American.

Although the Archbishop of Zante, a delegate to the Parliament, is mentioned in connection with Swamiji, it is apparent that he visited Des Moines at an earlier date. Unlike Swamiji’s lectures in Evanston which, as the reader will remember, were given in conjunction with Dr. Carl von Bergen, those in Des Moines were delivered alone.

During the short time Swamiji stayed in Des Moines he apparently electrified the city. The following item, a portion of which has been quoted in “The Life,” is from the Iowa State Register (date unknown):

Swami Vivekananda, the Hindu monk, spoke three times in Des Moines. During his stay in the city, which was happily prolonged by the cancellation of engagements farther west, Vivekananda met many of the best people in the city, who found their time well spent discussing religious and metaphysical questions with him. But it was woe to the man who undertook to combat the monk on his own ground, and that was where they all tried it who tried it at all. His replies came like flashes of lightning, and the venturesome questioner was sure to be impaled on the Indian’s shining intellectual lance. The workings of his mind, so subtle and so brilliant, so well stored and so well trained, sometimes dazzled his hearers, but it was always a most interesting study. He said nothing unkind, for his nature would not permit that. Those who came to know him best found him the most gentle and lovable of men, so honest, frank, and unpretending, always grateful for the many kindnesses that were shown him.

Vivekananda and his cause found a place in the hearts of all true Christians.

Unfortunately we now lose all trace of Swamiji until middle of January 1894, and a period of six weeks remains in total darkness. Although during this time he must have been extremely active, lecturing here and there in large and small cities, thus far all attempts to unearth information regarding his whereabouts have been in vain. But the search continues and hope is by no means given up.

II

At this point, I think it might be advisable to give the reader a brief picture of the Middle West in 1893, showing the kind of mentality with which Swamiji came in contact, the kind of people he met and what, on the whole, he was up against, for I believe that at least a general picture of the American scene in the eighteen-nineties is necessary to a true understanding of his lecture tour.

The nineties were strange and confused years. On the one hand, Americans looked backward into a more or less orderly century in which they had been robustly confident that they were headed toward a state of social perfection and that their nation was “a special object of Divine favor.” On the other hand, the nineties stared aghast into a new age in which the end was not at all certain. Economic and social conditions were undergoing rapid and radical changes with which the old moral and spiritual values could not cope. These values, moreover, were being attacked from within by the new physics and the new biology, to say nothing of Darwinism which had given a resounding blow to the doctrine of man’s unique position in the universe. The optimism and self-confidence that had characterized the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had suddenly given way to doubt and confusion. Nerves were on edge and, as in all transition periods, both the resistance to change and the attempts to adjust to it contained a note of hysteria.

As the story of the Parliament of Religions has shown, there were two very definite and clear-cut religious attitudes. One was that which clung to the^old order of things with the strength and ferocity of a death struggle. The denominations which held this attitude, and which were later to be characterized as “fundamentalist,” refused to give way either to Darwinism or to the social conditions which called for a broader and more liberal outlook than that of the nineteenth century. They resented the higher criticism and clung with fierce tenacity to a literal and rigid interpretation of Scripture. They had little use for the Parliament of Religions, and of course no use at all for Swamiji.

Liberal Christianity, on the other h£nd, had set itself to accept and incorporate into its tenets man’s new knowledge, and at the same time it attempted to socialize religion, conceiving it the duty of the church to examine such problems as the labor question, the growth of slums, the creation of huge and predatory fortunes, political corruption, and so on. It assumed a moral responsibility for man’s social and economic welfare and invaded the political field to the neglect of the spiritual. Secularization was the inevitable result. But nevertheless it was the clergy of this liberal Christianity which, priding itself upon its broad-mindedness, welcomed Swamiji. It was no accident that in every city he was almost invariably invited to speak at either a Unitarian or a Congregational church.

It has been said by some that the Transcendentalist movement, which took place earlier in the nineteenth century’, had prepared the American mind for Swamiji’s teachings. In a sense this is true, for the eyes of many had been opened to the life of the spirit by the writings of Emerson, Thorcau and even Bronson Alcott. Yet it is a fact that by the seventies those eyes had closed again. Transcendentalism had lost ground. It was no longer in tune with a generation that was becoming increasingly materialistic and which looked for a solution to its problems in a more down-to-earth and scientific philosophy. The vanguard of religious thought strove to come to terms with the findings of science, and the emphasis was now upon social reform in accordance with the laws of nature rather than those of spirit. It is true that such religions as Christian Science and New Thought were spreading rapidly, but by and large these religions emphasized man’s material rather than spiritual welfare. Only in so far as they asserted that man’s problems can be solved through regeneration of the spirit were they in sympathy with* the teachings of Swamiji. But even so theirs was a small voice scarcely heard ; it was drowned out by the most “respectable” liberal thought of the age, which insisted, as we have seen, that a change in human nature could be brought about only by first transforming the social environment.

While socialized Christianity, whose leaders and adherents were tofce found for the most part on the East Coast, fought for all manner of economic and social reforms, the “fundamentalists,” who predominated in the Middle West and South, busied themselves with frenzied attacks upon intemperance and vice. The “churchwomen” whom Swamiji mentioned during an interview in India no doubt belonged to this breed of reformer. Of them he said:

“These ‘churchwomen’ are awful fanatics. They are under the thumb of the priests there. Between them and the priests they make hell of earth and make a mess of religion. With the exception of these, the Americans are a very good people.”

These “churchwomen” were legion. Shrill and aggressively moral, they held up a distorted picture of what was at the time extolled as “pure and enlightened womanhood.” They formed innumerable committees and besieged and terrorized newspaper editors in their self-righteous crusades, sniffing out vice in every corner and finding it even where it did not exist.

A book which depicts this period speaks of this type of woman as “a terror to editors, the hope of missionary societies and the prey of lecturers. . . . Her performances were listlessly sanctioned by men whose covert emotionalism she openly and more courageously expressed in an instinctive envy of all that was free, cool or unhaltered in life, in art and affairs. She was an emblem, a grotesque shape in hot black silk, screaming at naked children in a clear river, with her companionable ministers and reformers at heel.”

These “Titanesses,” who for the most part inhabited the smaller cities and towns of the Middle West, were not content simply to seek out the depravity, real and imagined, of the large cities, but found a made-to-order outlet in the monstrous tales of “heathen” practices which for decades had been fed to them by the missionaries. There was something psychopathic about these women who turned a stiff, disapproving back upon the real issues of the day and clung to an unphilosophical form of rigid Christianity which had nothing to do with the actual world in which they lived and thrived. Hypocrisy was rampant, and it is little wonder that Swamiji’s reproof became more and more forceful as he toured the Middle West.

It is hard today to grasp the enormity of missionary propaganda that held hypnotic sway over the American mind during the last half of the nineteenth century ; for ignorant and fanciful as we may still be in regard to Hinduism, the ground has certainly been cleared of the more absurd and monstrous notions that flourished a half century ago. The following hymn is typical of the kind of thing that confronted Swamiji. It comes from a book entitled:    “Songs for the Little Ones at Home” written by a Christian missionary in India for the edification of the young:

See that heathen mother stand Where the sacred current flows;

With her own maternal hand Mid the waves her babe she throws.

Hark! I hear the piteous scream ;

Frightful monsters seize their prey,

Or the dark and bloody stream Bears the struggling child away.

Fainter now, and fainter still,

Breaks the cry upon the ear;

But the mother’s heart is steel She unmoved that cry can hear.

Send, oh send the Bible there,

Let its precepts reach the heart;

She may then her children spare—

Act the tender mother’s part.

In 1893 such verses, earnestly piped by “the little ones at home” were no laughing matter. Every level of society had been bombarded with falsehoods and slander regarding India. When Swamiji later said that all the mud on the bottom of the Indian Ocean could not balance the filth that had been thrown at his motherland, he was not exaggerating. Characteristic was a book entitled “India and Its Inhabitants.” It was first published in 1858 and comprises 335 pages of lectures delivered throughout America by a Mr. Caleb Wright, M.A., (no relation of Prof. John Henry Wright). On the title page is the information that “The Author Visited India and Travelled Extensively There, For the Express Purpose of Collecting The Information Contained in This Volume”—information, one might add, which was predominantly false, calumnious and sensational. This book, profusely illustrated with line drawings and replete with moral reflections on the order of “Send, oh send the Bible there,” had a phenomenal success among the intelligentsia. A preface cites testimonials from the presidents of twenty American colleges who gave unstinting praise to the lectures of Caleb Wright. A comparison of two editions of the book shows that within a space of two years over 36,000 copies were printed.

And this was but one book among many of its kind. For decades before Swamiji came to America, missionary calumny against India had saturated the public mind and provided it with thrills of righteous horror. The atmosphere in the early nineties was still thick with ignorance and bigotry, poisonous to both America and India, and it was inevitable that Swamiji, confronted by so strongly entrenched and so pernicious an enemy to his motherland, would make every effort to combat it.

One indication that he gave serious thought to the missionary propaganda against India is the fact, recently come to light, that a few months after the Parliament he took the trouble to copy out in longhand on three sheets of letter paper a passage which portrayed the true missionary situation in India. A curious coincidence is connected with these pages, and before giving their contents I should like to digress a little to tell of it. It was through the kindness of Swami Vishwananda, head of the Vedanta center in Chicago, that these three pages, covered with Swamiji’s handwriting in pencil, came into the hands of Swami Ashokananda. Welcome as they were, they presented a mystery, for there was no indication from what source Swamiji had quoted, if he had quoted all. The only clue was a single notation in his hand on the back of the third sheet, which read: “Louis Rousselet,” an unknown name which could mean anything or nothing. But while Swami Ashokananda was puzzling over the import of Swamiji’s writing, the San Francisco Vedanta Society received a packet of secondhand books that had been bought on sale, sight unseen. Among them was a large illustrated travel book on India, long out of print—by Louis Rousselet! On page 533 was the passage in question. For the reader’s information, the title of this book is “India and Its Native Princes—Travels in Central India and in the Presidencies of Bombay and Bengal.” It is a translation of the French “LInde des Rajahs” and was first published by Scribner, Armstrong and Co. in 1876. Later it ran into other editions. The passage which struck Swamiji and which, no doubt, was the first true account of India he had read for a long time, is given here precisely as he copied it:

Is there a people in the world more tolerant than this good gentle Hindoo people, who have been so often described to us as cunning, cruel and even bloodthirsty? Compare them for an instant with the Mussulmans, or even with ourselves, in spite of our reputation for civilization and tolerance. Only let a Chinese or an Indian come and walk in our streets during a religious festival or ceremony, and will not the crowd exhibit the most hostile feelings towards him if his bearing should not be in conformity with the customs of the country? Will his ignorance excuse him? I doubt it. And in what country could such a spectacle be witnessed as that which met my eyes that day in this square of Benares? There, at ten paces from all that the Hindoo holds to be most sacred in religion, between the Source of Wisdom and the idol of Siva a Protestant missionary’ has taken his stand beneath a tree. Mounted on a chair, he was preaching in the Hindostani language, on the Christian religion and the errors of paganism. I heard his shrill voice, issuing from the depths of a formidable shirt-collar, eject these words at the crowd, which respectfully and attentively surrounded him—“You are idolaters 1 That block of stone which you worship has been taken from a quarry, it is no better than the stone of my house.”

The reproaches called forth no murmur; the missionary was listened to immovably, but his dissertation was attended to, for every now and then one of the audience would put a question, to which the brave apostle replied as best he could. Perhaps we should be disposed to admire the courage of the missionary if the well-known toleration of the Hindoos did not defraud him of all his merit; and it is this tolerance that most disheartens the missionary one of whom said to me, “Our labours are in vain ; you can never convert a man who has sufficient conviction in his own religion to listen, without moving a muscle, to all the attacks you can make against it.”

This passage must have seemed like a refreshing oasis of sanity to Swamiji, and he copied it out for the benefit of friends. On the back of the second page of his transcription there is the following notation in an unknown hand:

Written by Swami the 12th [really the 11th] of February—after dining with Mr. and Mrs. Woodhead and Carl Von Bergen—Before leaving us in the afternoon, he gave us one of his most wonderful efforts on spiritual things, “I say there is but one remedy for one too anxious for the future—To go down on his knees.” — Mr. and Mrs. Norton came home with the girls in the evening. Swami left for Detroit Monday Feb. 13 [12]— 1894.

III

The Parliament of Religions can perhaps be likened to a huge boulder dropped into the middle of a shallow pond, causing upheaval on all sides. Even without Swamiji the Parliament would have created no little confusion, for it was a shock to people to discover that Oriental priests were not on a level with grotesquely masked medicine men; but with Swamiji the effect was galvanizing and permanent. Something had happened in America that could never be talked away, although many an effort was made to do just that. From the very brief and general survey of the religious climate of America during the last decade of the nineteenth century which has been given above the reader may be able to deduce the various reactions to the Parliament.

But the repercussions were even more pronounced than one might have expected, and I know of no better way to study them than through the contemporaneous newspapers of a typical American city, for there one can sec the situation at first hand.

In “The Life of Swami Vivekananda” it is said:    “In his tours the Swami visited all the larger cities of the Eastern and Midwestern States,” and the list of these cities includes St. Louis, Missouri. But it would appear that Swamiji did not go there. A thorough search has been made of the St. Louis newspapers of 1893 and 1894, and no mention has been found of his lectures. This omission constitutes fairly conclusive evidence that St. Louis was not included in his itinerary. For wherever Swamiji went he made news, and it is unthinkable that the reporters of St. Louis would have failed at least to mention his presence. One explanation of this lies in the fact that, according to contemporary reports, St. Louis was for unknown reasons “a wretchedly poor lecture town,” and was no doubt shunned by lecture bureaus. But even if Swamiji did not lecture there, the city was not exempt from repercussions of the Parliament, and I think it will serve very well as our typical “case.”

The St. Louis Republic ran a column called “Sunday Thoughts on Morals and Manners.” It was written by an anonymous clergyman and is perhaps one of the finest examples that one could come upon of the religious mentality of the Midwest.

On September 10, the eve of the opening of the Parliament, all was serene. The clergyman with admirable and placid broadmindedness invoked the blessings of God upon the Congress which was to open the next day:

There ought to come out of the parliament an authoritative statement of the creeds of the world, brought down to date, and revised into as close harmony with the age as possible—of rare interest and importance to all students of comparative religion. Thus far wc have been obliged to consult ancient authorities, or to grope after rare and sometimes inaccessible books, or else take the word of unfriendly critics, regarding the tenets of faiths beyond the Christian pale. It will be a gain worth the whoje cost of the parliament to get from these faiths themselves their raison d’etre. . . . Not that the faiths represented will fraternize. Far from it. They are essentially antagonistic and exclusive. Each claims all, or will accept nothing. But it is something to win the consent of their representatives to confer at all, and to make on a common platform an expose of faith and conduct.

Our clergyman immediately followed these reflections with statistical proof, for the benefit of “those who imagine that Christianity is declining” that, on the contrary, it was growing by leaps and bounds and that “the Electric Age, on whose threshold we stand, will bring in the greater part of the whole human race [to the Christian roster].”

By the following Sunday this quiet and reasonable clergyman had become transformed. The generosity and calm with which he had settled down to hear what the religions beyond the Christian pale had to say for themselves were no longer anywhere in evidence. He was raging mad. He wrote:

The reports of the proceedings of the Parliament of Religions, which assembled in Chicago last Monday, and is now in session, show, as might have been expected, an insistence upon the part of all the speakers that each one is eternally and exclusively right. This is especially true of the representatives of the various Oriental faiths. Claims are easily made—often out of wind! When claims conflict, the courts test them. Christ lays down a practical rule—“By their fruits ye shall know them 1 ” What are the fruits of the Oriental faith?

Take India. Polytheism prevails in the grossest forms. There are not less than 330,000,000 deities— enough to give each man, woman and child a god of his or her own. These are worshipped by impure rites, and exact on the part of their devotees self-torture, including in the case of widows burial or burning alive. The Hindoo is taught that these images are divine, and the heaviest judgments are denounced [pronounced] against him if he dares to suspect that they are nothing else than the elements which compose them. Cast is universal. Tyranny is immemorial. Woman is degraded. Polygamy abounds. Infanticide is common. Lying and theft are habitual. There is a want of tenderness toward and care for the sick, the poor and the dying. Ignorance and slavery and immorality compose the real trinity of Hindustan. These facts are undeniable.

“Sunday Thoughts” went on to give a brief outline of the faiths of Shintoism and Mohammedanism, which latter “came out of the distempered brain of the epileptic Mohammed.” This was the minister who had a week before serenely welcomed the opportunity the Parliament offered for the study of comparative religion. This indeed was the Middle West in its true colors, the thin veneer of liberality thrown to the winds.

The following week, as the Parliament drew to a close, our clergyman made it clear, lest anyone be misled, that nothing at all had been learned from the sessions other than what he had predicted in the beginning:

Perhaps the chief value [of the Parliament] will be found in the demonstration given of the universality of the religious instinct. . . . There is a difference as abysmal as the space that divides heaven and earth between the ethics of Confucius, the dreamy mysticism of Buddha, the mist and moonshine of Theosophy, the dizzy polytheism of Brahmanism, the ancestor-worship of Shinto and the Christian system. All that there is of sweet and pure and good in the other faiths Christianity contains in a higher development, with a super-added wealth of distinctive tenets all its own. . . .

We inscribe over it the old legend that was traced on the pillars of Hercules—Ne plus ultra.

Having settled this point, he deals another blow at Mohammedanism and then sits back to pursue the unruffled and platitudinous tone of his column.

But not for long. The Parliament continued to rankle within him. On October 15, a large part of “Sunday Thoughts’” was devoted to a comparison of the Christian ideal of womanhood with that of “the semi-civilized peoples of the Orient.” He wrote:

The ethnic religions of China, India and Japan and the teachings of Islam are alike in making woman guilty of her sex and in giving her importance solely as an annex to man. . . . She must be “protected,” and to make and keep her willing to be “protected” she is dwarfed in mind, stunted in soul and prostituted to mere physical uses.

There is a great deal more in this same vein. The fact was that if anyone wanted to stir up hostility against a culture or a religion he could not do better than suggest, or boldly state, that its treatment of women was not all that it should-be. Never had American women been more conscious of themselves as women than in the nineties. One woman writer, an exception among them, summed up the situation with humor and objectivity. In an article entitled “Women’s Excitement Over ’Woman,'” which was published in the Forum of September 1893, she writes:

Woman is a species of high and heroic and emancipated womanhood, as serviceable to the sex for the purposes of rhetorical and impassioned address, as that gentle and vapid species, “the Fair Sex,” is to men for after-dinner gallantry. She is wise with the wisdom of clubs and conventions and strong in her inheritance of instincts. There is nothing of which she is not sure, except that man was designed by nature to be her helper ; and there is nothing which she will not do for the good of her own species, except do nothing…..She gets columns, nay pages, of the newspapers written by Her for Her …. The magazines bow to the pressure of Her personality, and review Her profoundly in the light of history and of every possible and impossible modem circumstance.

All the missionaries needed to do in the nineties was to elaborate on the plight of the Hindu widow and they had the full force of outraged American womanhood ranged beside them. It was a force to be reckoned with and one which few editors dared oppose. It is little wonder that Swamiji so often spoke of the Hindu ideal of womanhood as he toured America, for this aspect of Indian culture had been dragged as far down as possible into the mud and there exploited for all it was worth.

In “Sunday Thoughts” of October 15 our clergyman made use of another current device—one which served many of his kind in getting around the inconvenient fact of the intellectual brilliance and moral grandeur displayed at the Parliament by the Oriental delegates. lie quotes the following item taken from a Chicago newspaper, the Interior: “. . . It is especially noticeable that most of the men who eulogized alien faiths were those who personally owed their intellectual quickening and their morals to contact with Christianity.”

But how was one to deal with Swamiji in this respect? The author of “Sunday Thoughts” maintained a judicious silence on the subject, and one can only imagine the intensity of his indignation when on October 30, 1893, Prince Wolkonsky, the Russian delegate to the Parliament who, as readers will remember, became a friend of Swamiji, spoke in St. Louis on his impressions of America. In the course of his talk which appeared in the St. Louis Republic of October 31, Wolkonsky said with his customary frankness:

Don’t ask every man:    “To what church do you belong?” It is of no importance to you, but it is to him. The question is: Is he a man? Judge him by what he is. The great value of the religious congress was that these people learned to know a man. There was one man there the embodiment of spirituality! I do not know what church he belonged to. He thinks and acts and speaks as a Christian. But you say he is not a Christian. So much the better. You say he is a Buddhist. Better still. If you belong to a higher religion you should try to be better still than he.

There can be no doubt that Wolkonsky was referring to Swamiji, whom many had taken to be a Buddhist and over whom Chicago had gone wild.

It wasn’t until February 18 that our clergyman had his answer ready. In one short paragraph he neatly disposed of Wolkonsky and Swamiji once and for all. It was the perfect retort. One can almost see him standing aside to watch the effect of it:

One of the picturesque figures at the Chicago Parliament of Religions was a Hindoo monk named Vive Kananda. He impressed his hearers as being a man of remarkable intelligence and vivacity. Many thought highly of a religion that could produce such a representative. Now it transpires that he is a graduate of Harvard University. That is where all his Nineteenth Century notions came from. He is indebted to Asia only for his color and his costume.

The Christian clergy could now draw a deep breath. “Sunday Thoughts on Morals and Manners” however, does not represent the whole of religious thought in the Middle West. In their reaction to the Parliament of Religions not all clergymen resorted to a tempest of name-calling. The liberal section of the Christian church, which had already faced the fact that the Christian doctrine needed re-examining if it was to meet the requirements of the times, took a more serious and honest view of the situation. The St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat, a far more liberal paper than the Republic, reflected this attitude in an article of October 2, which covered the sermons given on the Sunday following the close of the Parliament. Its headline reads: “Religious Provincialism” and subtitles:    “It Has Received Its Death Blow in America, says Dr. Snyder. The Parliament of Religions Discussed in Many Pulpits—Christianity Must Prove Its Superiority at the Bar of Public Intelligence.”

But whatever were the reactions to the Parliament of Religions, there can be no doubt that it had caused a ferment in the pulpits of America. Ministers ranted, reasoned and made resolutions regarding the necessity for self-examination. The storm extended as far as China, where, according to the St. Louis Republic of February 18, 1894, a religious Parliament, composed of the various missionary elements at work there, was held for “Mutual encouragement in the one great mission of Christian enlightenment”

But repercussions of this sort were not all: something else happened. A nation-wide religious revival of immense proportions took place. People suddenly began to rush to the churches in overwhelming numbers. According to the St. Louis Republic of January 21, 1894:

Revivals are being held everywhere, and the accessions to the church are gratifying results that prove the stability of the great truths taught by the prophets of old, and explained by Christ himself… In New York, Boston, Philadelphia and even in San Francisco, the work is being carried on by religious workers with unusual success, and the new year promises to be as productive of good results as the years of 1857-58, when failure after failure created distrust in the permanence of things of earth. . . . The present generation watching the mighty strides of progress and struggling in the vortex of business cares, has been prone to adopt the negative creed of the Pantheist or to answer in the easy manner of the Agnostic; but now, in the time of trouble, the soul instinctively seeks its Maker and a tide of religious sentiment is rushing with an irresistible current, cleansing sinful lives and carrying away the barriers of sin. . . . Evangelists, zealous workers, are converting sinners everywhere and the light of gospel, with incomparable radiance, is Hooding the land.

On January 29, 1894, the St. Louis Republic again covered the religious revival in a front page dispatch from New York, headlined: “A Religious Wave Now Sweeping Over New York and Brooklyn” The article reads in part:

Church workers in New York think that a tidal ? wave of religion has been fairly launched in the United States and is fairly settling over New York and Brooklyn. Revival meetings are being held in more than half of the churches in Brooklyn, and ministers in New York are joining the crusade. . . . Now from all parts of the country the news is coming of a religious awakening, promising to surpass in magnitude that one of the past. . . . Ministers from every portion of the City of Chun:lies reported renewed interest; there seemed to be remarkable religious feeling. At last evangelists were engaged. Meetings have been held daily in half a dozen places. Hundreds and hundreds have risen for prayers, and thousands have promised to lead a better life. Last Sunday the new acquisitions to the membership of the churches of the city [Brooklyn] aggregated nearly 500. . . . Last week the Central Committee [a body made up of 17 clergymen of all denominations] decided that the movement had assumed such proportions that the body could not adequately take care of it, so the responsibility was delegated to the rightful authorities and notice was given that every pastor in the city must attend to those nearest his own doors.

For three weeks meetings have been held in 13 churches every evening. During the day two meetings have been kept up. This week more churches will be opened every night and the day meetings will be continued. The attendance at all of these meetings has been phenomenal. Every church is crowded. People willingly stand for hours. “After meetings” draw more people than ever. They seem loath to leave the church. The revivals of to-day are conducted very differently from those of 10 years ago. The old way was to frighten sinners with terrible stories of an everlasting hell until they were driven, from sheer sense of fear, into the inquiry room, where “experience meetings” were . depended on to do the rest. All is now changed. The all-powerful love of Jesus Christ is the appeal. God’s love and forgiveness the theme.

The St. Louis Daily Globe-Democrat also covered the religious revival, devoting, on February 4, 1894, more than a full page to a statistical report of conversions in five states. The article consists almost solely of the names of the churches in 177 counties and the number of people who had recently joined them. I cannot imagine anyone sitting down to read this, and fortunately the essence of the whole story is told in the following headlines: “THE CHRISTIAN HARVEST. Astonishing Results of Religious Revivals in the West. Nearly Fifty-Four Thousand Conversions Since Last September. Churches Strengthened by Forty-Nine Thousand New Members. A Religious Awakening Almost Unprecedented in Extent and Power. Special Reports from Globe-Democrat Correspondents, Covering One Hundred and Seventy-Seven Counties in Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Texas and Arkansas.” I hope the reader will note that the figures given pertain to live states only, and that he will also note that the revival started in September, 1893— the month of the Parliament of Religions.

It is always a problem for historians and psychologists to explain what incites such phenomena as the sudden conversion of thousands upon thousands of people. Perhaps many fortes are at work. In this particular case one can clearly see at least three. First, the obvious one: there was at the time a financial depression. Second: the Christian clergy had been pressed by the unexpected outcome of the Parliament to stir up Christian fervor. And third, and I believe most important: there suddenly appeared in America one who embodied a spiritual power of the very highest order.

The most remarkable thing about this revival of 1893 was the unmistakable atmosphere of joy which pervaded it and which distinguished it from revivals of earlier times. A new note had been struck in the exhortations of the ministers. The clergy no longer hammered, as they had done in previous revivals, upon the imminence of hell-fire and eternal damnation, terrorizing their parishioners into a hysterical surrender. Now the emphasis was upon God’s infinite mercy, the glories of heaven. People were not hounded to church; they poured in and sang their hymns with an irrepressible elation.

A reporter in the St, Louis Republic remarked upon this .change of attitude from that of the old days in a lengthy article entitled “In The Olden Time. The article concludes with the following paragraph:

[The old time exhorter’s] spirit is the distilled essence of vinegar mixed with the extracts of wormwood and gall and his dolorous voice sounds the funeral knell of his parishioners* hopes for happiness on earth. Happily, this class of exhorters is dying off rapidly and the penetrating rays of the true conception of God’s mercy are penetrating the fastnesses and jungles in which the somber exhorter had so long held forth.

But aside from the change in the voice from the pulpit, there was a spontaneity in the response which took even the clergymen by storm and which makes it difficult not to believe that the advent of so great a prophet as Swamiji had stirred the spiritual forces latent in America and awakened such a hunger for spiritual sustenance that men and women everywhere eagerly rushed to satisfy it, flocking in droves to the religion closest to them, in whose tradition they had been reared and with whose doctrines and forms they were familiar.

Swamiji’s fame, as we know, had spread like wildfire through America both during and after the Parliament of Religions. Swain i Abhedananda, who knew at first hand the American reaction to him, said in a lecture delivered on March 8, 1908, before the Vedanta Society of New York:    “During the last decade there have been few pulpits in the United States which have not held preachers who have had something to say either for or against the teachings of the world-renowned Swami Vivekananda.*’ Swamiji’s message was spread far and wide. In one guise or another it becameTknown to the people, and it cannot but be supposed that a surge of genuine religious feeling came as a result of this great current of fresh thought from the East, which was given with the full vigor of a spiritual power such as the world has rarely known. Such power moves silently and invisibly but surely, working on all levels, churning the surface into a foam, as well as altering forever the deep, hiddeq currents of the spiritual life of a whole people. It was the latter result for which Swamiji had come, but the former was bound to take place,and when one thinks of it,it would seem more a matter for wonder if something of this sort had not taken place than that it had.