The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 9/Letters - Fifth Series/CLXVIII Mother

To Mrs. Ole Bull (in London)

18 May 1900

MY DEAR MOTHER,

Many thanks for Joe's [Miss Josephine MacLeod's] and your letters. I have again a  bad  relapse — and [am] struggling out of it. This time I am perfectly certain that with me all diseases are nervous. I want rest for two, three years — and not the least bit of work between. I will take rest with the Seviers in the Himalayas.

Mrs. [James Henry]  Sevier  gave  me 6,000 Rs. for family — this was distributed between my cousin, aunt, etc. The 5,000 Rs. for buying the house was borrowed from the Math funds. Do not stop the remittance you send to my cousin, whatever Saradananda may say to the contrary. Of course I do not know what he says.

I have long given up the idea of a little house on the Ganges, as I have not the money.

But I have got some in Calcutta and some with the Leggetts, and if you give a thousand more, that will be a fund for my own personal expenses (as you know I never took Math money) as well as for my mother. Kindly write to Saradananda to give up the little house plan. I am not going to write any more for weeks yet — till I completely recover. I hope to get over [it] in a few weeks from now — it was a terrible relapse. I am with a Doctor friend [Dr. Milburn H. Logan], and he is taking every care of me.

Tell Joe that going amongst different people with a message also does not belong to the Sannyasin; for a Sannyasin, [there] is quiet and retirement, scarcely seeing the face of man.

I am now ripe for that, physically at least. If I don't go into retirement, nature will force me to it. Many thanks that temporal things have been so well arranged by you.

With all love to Joe and yourself —

Your Son,

VIVEKANANDA