Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/41

Rh is for the protection of his soul. Having no selfish end in view he is ready to believe and to worship. To the western mind, belief and worship are as yet undreamed of. Instead of the silence of Om and the perfect rest of Nirvana, you hope for more business, more action, more pain, more unrest. The physical plane is the goal of life and the six planes above it are valueless assets of dreamland, unless they can be laid out into city lots. Turn your faces to the East, Europeans, and learn of the patient, restful millions whose dreams, daily and nightly, bring more truth than all your struggles and your science of two thousand years. The religion of the West has long since lost its hold on thoughtful men and soulful women. The only reality in your lives is pain. The light of your old altar-fires is growing dim and when again it is relighted it must be in the name of the master of renunciation whose servant and follower you behold in me. It shall be for the worship of the suffering unconscious to whom pain and pleasure are dreams alike, mere floating shadows which dim for the moment the perfect serenity of perfected being.

After the conclusion of this passage, Madame Hhatch asked the privilege of a final word. She spoke of the learned Swami so far from his home and drew a pathetic picture of his life of renunciation and his vow of poverty. His heart yearns for Bombay and the light of his own altar-fires where the sweet sandalwood burns in its temples of perfection, which are symbolized in the mouth-closing word Om. Yet he is forced to earn his bread on the other side of the earth teaching people who can not understand him and whose every contact raises blisters on his astral skin. It is our duty to open the way to his return to that which is dearer to him than life.

So at the instance of Mr. Abram Gridley, the schoolmaster, we took up a generous collection which the young Brahmin received in patient silence.

As he passed out, Miss Violet Dreeme, of Fidèletown, who is a poetess and suspected of jealousy toward Madame Hhatch, uttered the sole syllable of discord. "I read every word of that," she said, "in one of Mrs. Tingley's little books of Hindu Poetry." This Swami is the very man who was at the Midwinter Fair out at Golden Gate Park. He etches your portraits on cardboard with his fingers while you wait and he cheated me with a bad half-dollar. Why, Madame Silva, who told fortunes in the next booth, says that he got a reporter for the San Francisco Clarion to write this speech, and it was a whole month before he had it learned so that he could go through it straight.

"The fact is, I am told, the Hindu in America has but one article of faith. More precious than rubies is the woman of leisure seeking for a new religion. The real 'Secret Doctrine of the Brahmins' is this: 'So beg that you will seem rather to grant than to receive a favor.'"