RIDGELY MANOR: THE GREAT SUMMER Part III mong Swamiji's occupations at Ridgely Manor was a pursuit of the art of drawing, which he undertook with all the eagerness and concentration of an aspiring young student, "toiling over his crayons," as his teacher wrote, "with as single a mind and heart as if that were his vocation." And he did wonderfully well. Maud Stumm's marveling account of his drawing lessons is included in her memoirs of Swamiji, from which I have been quoting now and then. These invaluable reminiscences were written at Josephine MacLeod's request and were first published in Vedanta and the West (November-December 1953), having been made available by Mrs. Frances Leggett. One day [Miss Stumm recalled] he told me that he wanted to undertake some sort of work that would keep his hands busy and prevent him from thinking of things that fretted him at that time--and would I give him drawing lessons? So materials were produced, and at an appointed hour he came, promptly, bringing to me, with a curious little air of submission, a huge and red apple, which he laid in my hands, bowing gravely. I asked jim the significance of this gift and he said,"In token that the lessons may be fruitful"--and such a pupil as he proved to be! Once only did I have to tell him anything;his memory and concentration were marvelous, and his drawings strangely perfect and intelligent for a beginner. By the time he had taken his fourth lesson, he felt quite equal to a portrait; so... Turiyananda posed, like any bronze image and was drawn capitally--all in the study of Mr. Leggett, with its divan for our seat, and its fine light to aid us.... On a hot summer day Miss Stumm and others asked Swamiji to show how he wound his turban--a demonstration he had given perhaps countless times in the West for fascinated children and grownups alike. Now at Ridgely Manor he wound and unwound the length of silk, disclosing the mysteries, not only of his own turban but of other kinds as well. "When he arranged it as the desert people do, to keep the neck from the great heat, " Miss Stumm recounted, "I asked him to pose, and he did talking all the time. That was the day he talked to us of purity and truth." I am able to reproduce here a photograph of Maud Stumm's drawing of Swamiji au Bedouin, which has, at least, historical value.("The lines of the mouth were so simple and lovely and yet so very difficult!" Miss Stumm wrote of her attempts to draw him.) Unfortunately, Swamiji's own drawings of Swami Turiyananda, Nivedita, and others no longer exist, or are at present lost to us. He himself, one imagines, would not have destroyed them, for he took immense pride in his new-found talent. Thus the days slipped by, all of them beautiful, each marked by some special, unforgettable conversation or incident--a long, spellbinding talk on a balmy evening, or so small a thing as the sight of a flaming robe flashing in and out of the shade of the old chestnut trees or of a dark head bent over a sketch book, its owner lost to the world. In his letter to Mary Hale, Swamiji mentioned that he intended to go to New York to see "the Dewey procession." His reference was to the public welcome to be held on Friday, September 29, for Admiral George Dewey, who almost a year and a half earlier had won a naval victory in Manila Bay. He was still an idolized national hero, and the reception accorded him in New York with its wildy ecstatic crowds, fireworks, parades, and "Welcome, Dewey" spelled out in electric lights on Brooklyn Bridge, would have been worth the trip to see. But weather or not Swamiji went to see it is not at present known. In any event, the excursion would barely have interrupted the flow of summer days at Ridgely Manor--days that glided gently, almost imperceptibly into autumn. October brought changes to the household. Mrs. Bull finally arrived on Saturday, October 7, followed several days later by Olea. But as things turned out, Miss MacLeod's plans again miscarried. Two days later "the great summer" came, for her, to an unexpected end. On Monday, October 9 (a date noted in Sister Nivedita's small diary), a letter came to Ridgely from a Mrs. S.K. Blodgett, a widow, who was then unknown to Joe and Betty, saying that their elder brother, Taylor MacLeod, lay seriously ill, perhaps dying, in her home in Los Angeles, where she was nursing him. "Within two hours I was packed," Miss MacLeod wrote in her memoirs, "the horses were at the door...and as I went out Swami put up his hand and said some Sanskrit blessing and then he called out, 'Get up some classes and I will come.'" She could not have left Ridgely without a painful wrench at her heart; yet she drove off with a characteristic resilience and valiance, an acceptance of everything that came her way, which was indeed one of the traits for which Swamiji loved her. Some two weeks later he was to pay her a tribute during the course of a conversation:She was the only one among the group at Ridgely who had attained freedom, he said, and in this he included himself. She could leave everything and everybody and go out to do her work without ever looking back--a quality won only through thousands of lifetimes. And indeed Miss MacLeod had the buoyancy and wide-heartedness that comes from an innate and true detachment. "Jojo is the same as usual,"she wrote of herself that summer at Ridgely. "I am radiant and happy & don't want anything on earth but a few more people to love." In swamiji's parting call to Miss MacLeod--"Get up some classes and I will come"--one finds the first indication that he felt once again the desire to carry his message to far, and perhaps fertile, fields. Yet only in retrospect does one see that call as the announcement of a new and great mission; there were no flourishes, no rolling drums; indeed Swamiji's call seemed at the time to have been only a passing thought, rising like a token bubble from some depths where the future was being formed, glinting for a moment, and then floating off. With Miss MacLeod gone to California- or Kali-fornia, as she liked to spell it--and most of the young people gone back to school, to college, or to work, their vacations over, October was a relatively quiet month at Ridgely. Yet it was not a dull one; for where Swamiji was, there dullness was totally precluded. We learn now of his days and his words from Nivedita's long, detailed, and faithful letters to "Yum-Yum, " which come almost on the heels of the latter's chatty but sketchy letters to Mrs. Bull and which have been published in the Letters of Sister Nivedita, edited by Sankari prasad Basu, a rich and absorbing collection in which we find invaluable glimpses of Swamiji through Nivedita's eyes and catch echoes of his voice. Here we see him in Ridgely Manor "pacing up and down for an hour and a half like a caged lion," warning her "against politeness-against this 'lovely' and 'beautiful'--against this continual feeling of the external," admonishing her "to get rid of all these petty relations of society and home, to hold the soul firm against the perpetual appeals of sense, to realize that the rapture of autumn trees is as truly sense-enjoyment as a comfortable bed or a table dainty, to hate the silly praise and blame of people." Or one hears him talking of shiva:"Even meditation would be a bondage to the free soul, but Shiva goes on and on for the good of the world, the Eternal Incarnation.... For meditation is the greatest service--the most direct--that can be rendered." He talked of Sri Ramakrishna--"full of gaiety and merriment"--and of his own days of discipleship at Dakshineswar, the temple on the Ganga, where in "perfect silence, broken only by the cries of the jackals, in the darkness under the great tree, [we sat night after night] the whole night through, and He talked to me, when I was a boy." "I never heard the Prophet talk so much of Sri Ramakrishna," Nivedita wrote Miss MacLeod in a letter of which only an undated, heretofore unpublished fragment exists and which could have been written from India in early 1899; but the time, one thinks, could as well have been the fall of that year and the place, Ridgely Manor. "He told us what I had heard before of [his Master's] infallible judgment of men," she continued, finding good and greatness in the least apparent, and judging at once of the bad weight of karma that so and so had yet to work through before he could come to anything. "And so," Swami said, "you see my devotion is the dog's devotion. I have been wrong so often and He has always been right and now I trust His judgment blindly"--and then he told us how He would hypnotize anyone who came to him and in 2 minutes know all about him & Swami said that from this he had learnt to count our consciousness as a very small thing. They believe on grounds of this sort in the Math that Swami is Arjuna--and that there in the Garden at Dakshineshwar they have once more seen Krishna talking with His Disciple, giving him, as it were, a new Gita. And there was the time Swamiji startled Mrs. Leggett and Olea with his denunciation of the rigid laws and conventions of society by means of which the strong oppress the weak and with his admiration of individuals strong and courageous enough to break through those laws. He didnot hesitate to uphold the dark side of individual sovereignty, facing and embracing the Terrible, seeing even the criminal as an essential, indeed glorious, part of humanity's great surging drive toward freedom. Or he might spend an hour or so writing a poem. One of these, only recently made known to us, might well have been written for his hosts, who were finding happiness and renewed youth in their life together: One circle more the spiral path of life ascends, And Time's restless shuttle--running back and fro Through maze of warp and woof-- Spins out a stronger piece. Hand in hand they stand--and try To fathom depths whence springs eternal love, Each in other's eyes, And find no power holds over that age But brings the youth anew to them, And time--the good, the pure, the true. At times Swamiji was in a "great mood of devotion," at other times he would extol the path of the jnani, "he who likes nothing and witnesses all." Again, "he spoke of Kali and grew full of worship." Or he spoke prophetically of social problems, of "the mixture of races, and of 'the great tumults, the terrible tumults' through which the next state of things must be reached." He pointed out the hidden meanings of ancient Hindu myths and epics, of their bearing on modern life, of the ideals they depicted, the lessons they taught. And he told charming Indian Stories, two of which have come down to us through Maud Stumm and are given in the Appendix. Indeed, Swamiji talked, it would seem, of everything under the sun, and upon everything he cast the clear, brilliant light of another sun, the sun of Brahmavidya, infinitely more lustrous, more revealing. Very often after Miss MacLeod had left Ridgely, Nivedita and Mrs. Bull's friend Marian Briggs had Swamiji to themselves for hours at a time, the rest of household being occupied elsewhere or kept away by a tactful hostess as "he just went on and on -- and on." Those hours were heaven for the two who sat in his company--Nivedita absorbed, self forgetful, Mrs Briggs listening "exquisitely, without a word or a look." But whether Swamiji spoke to one person, or to two or to the whole group, nothing he said was not laced with riches. Even the most airy of conversations could call forth from him some jewel to savour and pass on to Yum. One day at lunch his friends teased him for his pride in so relatively minor a talent as his poetry or his painting: Mrs Bull turned [Nivedita wrote on October 18] and pointed out how his poetry had been the weak point on which he had been beguiled to the loss of honour. And she said her husband was never sensitive about criticism of his music-- that he expected, he knew it was not perfect. But 0n road-engineering he felt deeply, and could be flattered! Then, in our amusement, we all teased Swami for his carelessness about his religious teacherhood, and vanity about his portrait-painting ( he had produced three or portraits of me which others say are a libel even on me, but which just delights himself -- sweet King!) -- and he suddenly woke up and said, "You see there is one thing called love and there is another thing called Union. And Union is greater than Love. "I donot love Religion. I have become identified with it. It is my life. So no man loves that thing in which his life has been spent, in which he really has accomplished something. That which we love is not yet ourself. Your husband didnot love music for which he had always stood. He loved engineering in which as yet he knew comparatively little. This is the difference between Bhakti and Gnan[Jnana]. And this is why Gnan is greater than Bhakti." At other times he could be hilariously funny. "He described the effect of Boston beans and other Boston food one day," Nivedita told Miss MacLeod: "'You look at a face and if it is not quite flat you cannot tell anyway whether it is coming toward you or going from you.' Did not ever hear anything so funny? And he solemnly declared that if you live on baked beans and other things common in that city you will presently find yourself with the Boston face!!!" But even while Swamiji was full of fun, of poetry, and of sheer radiance of being during those summer and autumn days at Ridgely, the dark period (if one may call it so) of his life was not yet over. One cannot even imagine the quality of his suffering, no more than one can imagine the quality and magnitude of his joy. One only knows what he once or twice revealed to those close to him. Telling Yum of those heart-wrenching revelations, Nivedita wrote: On Thursday evening[November 2] Swami came down for a cigar or something, and found Mrs. Bull and myself in earnest talk. So he sat down too--of course. One could see that he was troubled and for the first time he talked of the two years foretold to him, of defection and disease and treachery--and of how it was growing thicker today than ever. Laughingly, he said he supposed the last month would be the worst. [Nivedita had long since determined on astrological grounds that the coming December 6, now a month or so away, would mark a decided upswing in Swamiji's fortunes.] He spoke of E.T.S.[Edward T. Strudy] and of the Indian troubles--and he said he found himself still the Sannyasi--he minded no loss--but he could be hurt through personal love. Treachery cut deep. S.Sara[Saint Sara, Mrs. Bull] had almost tears in her eyes when she came into my room after, and sat talking of it for an hour. She prays that we may be able, during this last month, to surround him with Peace... He had said something to S.Sara, and indeed again in that night-talk, of the fact that he is guided and protected in his work, but all that is personal is turned to ashes. ... The next day Swamiji was "radiant," and that night he slept well. But the following day he spoke so impassionedly of a deeper anguish that Nivedita "fled to her room to cry." Then he followed me[she wrote] and stood at the door a minute and revealed still more of the awful suffering....He was talking in the old way about escaping from the world--he has been reciting the hatred of Fame and Wealth all his life, but he is only now beginning to understand what it really means. It is becoming unbearable. "Where am I now!" he said, turning to me suddenly with such an awful look to lostness on his face. And then he began to repeat something--"And so to Thou--Ramakrishna--(with a pause) I betake myself. For in Thy Feet alone is the refuge of man." ..."This body is going anyway. It shall go with hard tapasya--I will say 10,000 OMs a day--and with fasting. Alone, alone by the Ganges--in the Himalayas--saying Hara Hara, the Freed One, the Freed One. I will change my name once more, and this time none shall know. I will take the initiation of sannyasa over again--and it shall be for this--and I will never never come back to anyone again." And then again that lost look, and the awful thought that he had lost his power of meditation. "I have lost all--lost all for you Mlechhas!" And with that a smile-- and a sigh--and the turning to go away. Only this(though this is enough) and the lines of a poem entitled "To My Own Soul"give glimpses into Swamiji's continuing sense of suffering during this period. "Hold yet a while, Strong Heart," he wrote, "Not part a life long yoke/Tough blighted looks the present, future gloom." And to be sure, his heart held strong, his courage never deserted him. What Swamiji meant by saying (if he said) that he may have "lost his power of meditation" who can tell? From what depths, or heights, of spiritual consciousness was he speaking? To what unimaginable levels of samadhi was he referring? One remembers that on his return to India after his first visit to the West he felt that his power to grant the highest realization had become exhausted by giving lectures in America and England. "If I put on the loin cloth and become absorbed in spiritual practice,...then perhaps the power to grant Nirvikalpa Samadhi may come," he had said. To be "alone by the Ganges in the Himalayas," to become absorbed in the Absolute was still is longing. To the extent that he molded and channeled his power and love into a form that the world could comprehend, to the extent that he lived and worked as a human being among human beings, to that extent, to that very great extent, he suffered. His effort, moreover, to awaken humanity to its own spiritual reality was in the very nature of things bound to meet with resistance and betrayal. Yet his sacrifice, one must suppose, consisted not so much, if at all, in the suffering of the body and mind as in the assumption of any such limitation was felt as pain, as longing, are, again, unimaginable; for on such heights that thin veil of limitation was also felt as unutterable joy. Swamiji suffered; and yet he didnot suffer; he could turn with "an awful look of lostness on his face" and yet he was ever an ocean of bliss. Through all his talks at Ridgely manor on any subject, in any mood came, "flashes of inner divinity" (Nivedita wrote to Yum), and if one looked at him steadily as he spoke(as his disciple could never help but do), one seemed, she wrote, "to be gazing through open portals straight into the infinite." " Is this because he is so little conscious of himself?" she asked. Or, what may amount to the same question, was it because neither the joys nor the pains of life could cloud or clutter those portals? The infinite stood open to full view, ever accessible to him and through him to others. In two letters written from Ridgely to Mrs. George W. Hale Swamiji spoke of the predominant evil of life, of the untouched sovereignty of the soul, and of renunciation as the means --the only means--to freedom. These were perhaps thoughts that were going through his mind at Ridgely, the detachment he recommended to "Mother Church" only different in degree from that total Aloneness that he himself desired. Ridgely Manor 5th Oct'99 My dear Mother Church Many many thanks for your kind words. I am so glad you are working on as ever. I am glad because the wave of optimism has not caught you yet. It is all very well to say-- everything is right but that is apt to degenerate into a sort of laissez-faire. I believe with you that the world is evil--made more hideous with a few dashes of good. All our works have only this value--that they awaken some to the reality of this horror--and [make them] flee for refuge to some place--beyond--which is called God--or Christ or Brahma or Buddha &c.Names donot make much difference. Again we must always remember our is only to work--we never attain results--How can we? Good can never be done without doing evil. We cannot breathe a breath without killing thousands of poor little animals. National prosperity is another name of death & degradation to millions of other races. So is individual prosperity the beggaring of many. The world is evil--and will ever remain so. It is its nature, and cannot be changed--"which one of you by taking thought &c." Such is truth--the wisdom is therefore in renunciation, that is-- to make the Lord our all in all. Be a true Christian , Mother--Like Christ renounce everything and let the heart & soul & body belong to Him & Him alone. All this nonsense which people have built round christ's name is not His teaching. He taught to renounce, He never says the earth is an enjoyable place--And your time has come to get rid of all vanities even the love of children & husband and think of the Lord and Him alone. Ever your Son, Vivekananda 23rd Oct'99 My dear Mother--I was taking a few days complete rest so am late in replying to your kind note. Accept my congratulations on the anniversary of your marriage. I pray many many such returns may come to you. I am sure my business [previous?] letter was colored by the state of my body--as indeed is the whole of existence to us. Yet Mother there is more pain than pleasure in life. If not, why do I remember you and your children --almost every day of my life and not many others? Happiness is liked so much because it is so rare--Is it not?Fifty percent of our life is mere lethargy, ennui, of the rest forty percent is pain, only ten happiness--and this for the exceptionally fortunate. We are ofttimes mixing up this state of ennui, with pleasure. It is rather a negative state whilst both pleasure and pain are nearer positive, though not positive. Pleasure and pain are both feeling not willing. They are only processes--which convey to the mind excitements or motives of action. The real positive action is the willing or impulse to work of the mind--begun upon[when?] the sensation has been taken in (pleasure or pain) thus the real is neither pleasure or pain. It has no connection with either. Quite different from either. The barking of the dog awakens the master to guard against a thief--or receive his dearest friend. It doesnot follow--therefore that the dog & and his master are of the same nature or have any degree of kinship. The feelings of pleasure or pain similarly awaken the soul to activity--without any kinship at all. The soul is beyond pain, beyond pleasure,sufficient in its own nature--and no hell can punish it nor any heaven can bless it. So far philosophy--I am coming soon to Chicago-- and hope to say Lord bless you to you & your children. All love as usual to my Christian relatives--scientific or quacks. Vivekananda Whatever suffering Swamiji may have known, whatever its nature or quality, his compassion and concern for others never lessened in the slightest; indeed, it was to serve their spiritual needs that he remained on earth. To those who needed his help he would talk sometimes for hours. There was, for instance, Olea, Mrs. Bull's "fretful" and generally ailing daughter, who was divorced from her husband in those days when divorce was looked upon askance and whose child had died the previous year. "On Sunday during lunch [Swamiji] came [to the "Inn"?] and spent three hours alone with Olea and left her a different woman," Nivedita wrote to Yum on October 18 and continued, "On Monday about 10 he came again and spent the morning. He brought the Vedas and Upanishads with him and gave her what was really a class on Gnan--all to herself-- though many of us were present. Wasn't that fine?" In Nivedita's diary one finds another indication of Swamiji's concern for Olea. On Friday, October 27, there is the entry:"[Swamiji] to Olea--'nightmares always begin pleasantly--only at the worst point [the] dream is broken--so death breaks the dream of life. Love death.'" (It may have been because of Olea's unhappy marriage, among others, that Alberta asked Swamiji,"Is there no happiness in marriage?" He replied, "Yes, Alberta, if marriage is entered into as a great austerity--and everything is given up--even principle!" He didnot minimize the difficulty of householder's lot. "I don't want to be a monk," Hollister once protested, "I want to marry and have children." "All right, my boy," Swamiji answered. "Remember only that you chose the harder path.") He had a word or a blessing for everyone, even for the baby, Frances. One morning, as Alberta told it in later years to her sister, the child came in from the garden, some flowers in her hand. She gave them to Swamiji, who said gravely, "In India we give flowers to our teachers." And he pronounced over her some sanskrit words. Seeing anyone depressed or woried, for whatever reason, he would go out of his way to dispel that person's particular nightmare--atleast for the time being. "I had a worriment that bothered me a good deal," Miss Stumm wrote in her notes, " and though I said nothing of it to anyone, it was constantly in my thoughts." She went on to tell how Swamiji had asked her to go for a walk with him to watch a threshing machine in a nearby field, and how, as they walked, he told her of the wonderful party that had been held the night before at the Manor: "Wonderful affair," he exclaimed, "stringed instruments and such a supper! Pheasants!" Where had she been? Everybody was there and "they danced and danced," everything moved out of the house. "Wonderful party!" This gala affair, to which Maud Stumm had not been invited and which had somehow been kept secret from her until now, was, ofcourse, all Swamiji's fairy tale, conjured up to divert her mind. And divert her mind it did, like shock therapy dealt with a magic wand. Miss Stumm's "worriment" may have been connected with a breaking heart, for she was suffering at this time, and later, from an unrequited love of long standing. Yet even so, Mrs. Frances Leggett remembered, she was tremendous fun, always highly entertaining and amusing. Sometimes Swamiji would join those who escorted her home in the evenings to the little village of Stone Ridge. We learn of one such walk in Nivedita's diary-entry for Sunday, October 15, in which, after noting Swamiji's talk with Olea, she continued: "Afternoon, Swami drew me while I wrote. Read Sch[open- hauer]. Walk home with Miss Stumm by moonlight." And of this same evening (which was Maud Stumm's last at Ridgely) Nivedita wrote to Yum: As we left her, I whispered to Swami that I couldn't bear even the sound of our feet in the dead hours at night. It was wonderful moonlight, and we walked on up the avenue in silence-a sound would have been desecration. Then he said, "When a tiger in India is on the trail of prey at night, if its paw or tail makes the least sound in passing, it bites it till the blood comes." And then he talked of the need we Western women had to absorb beauty quietly, and turn it over in the mind at another time. Two days later (on Tuesday,.October 17) Nivedita went into retreat, intending to remain secluded for fifteen days, or until November 1. "You see," she wrote to "Yum," "I have to finish [Kali the Mother, a small book, which as early as October 2 she had been "deep in writing on," as Miss MacLeod had reported], and there are other things I have to do--and I have always longed to try a retreat anyway, and my great obstacle was the Master." Nivedita's retreat, for which she had finally obtained Swamiji's permission, does not seem to have lasted long. On Friday, October 20, she wrote in her diary "went down to supper," and from subsequent entries it would appear that thereupon the retreat had come to an end. But however that may be, the weeks sped by. November came, bringing chilly days, and with it came the season of activity and work. One morning after breakfast Swamiji turned suddenly and fiercely to Nivedita and demanded how much longer she was going to hang on. "He was quite abusive," she told "Yum," "--and then he uttered a relenting word--you know how... Then he waxed glorious. If he had my health and strength he would conquer the world. I was a Kshattriya. Did I know that I belonged to his family? I was not a Brahmin. Austerity was the path....It was tremendous--and he ended with a blessing in which the Guru was lost and it became all Father--as he told me to go out into the world and fight for him--the only thing that he wanted--before he could pass away from the world into peace or death." "Oh! Yum!" Nivedita exclaimed, for tremendous indeed was the mandate she felt she had received. It was decided then and there that she would leave for Chicago with Olea and Alberta on November 7. On the same date Mrs. Bull would leave for Cambridge, Swamiji for New York. (Swami Turiyananda had already left Ridgely at the end of October and had gone on to Montclair, New Jersey.) But before the last partings came, an extraordinary event took place, which seemed at the time to be of great import to all concerned. I quote here Nivedita's account of the incident in a letter to Miss MacLeod, dated November 11, 1899, a facsimile of which is given in Sankari P. Basu's book Lokamata Nivedita. The day of which the letter tells was the previous Sunday, November 5. (The place, to judge from a memo, here reproduced, that Nivedita scribbled on the back of a photograph, was the "Inn.") On Sunday afternoon Swami insisted on my coming and packing with him, & as I worked he took out a couple of silk turbans to give the girls. Then two pieces of cotton cloth--gerrua colour--for Mrs. Bull. He called me to my room, where Mrs. Bull sat writing, to give these, & left the turbans on one side. First he shut the door--then he arranged the cloth as a skirt & chudder round her waist--then he called her a sannyasini & putting one hand on her head & one on mine he said: "I give you all that Ramakrishna P[arama- hamsa] gave to me. What came to us from a woman [the Divine Mother] I give to you two women. Do what you can with it. I cannot trust myself. I do not know what I might do tomorrow & ruin the work. Women's hands will be the best anyway to hold what came from a woman--from Mother. Who & what She is, I do not know, I have never seen Her, but Ramakr[ishna] P. saw Her & touched Her, like this (touching my sleeve). She may be a great disembodied spirit for all I know. Anyway I cast the load on you. I am going away to be at peace. I felt nearly mad this morning, & I was thinking and thinking what I could do, when I went to my room to sleep before lunch. And then I thought of this & I was so glad. It is like a release. I have borne it all this time, & now I have given it up...." Were these exactly the words he used? I think they were. It seems to me that it must have been about 3 o'clock or shortly after, for I think it was daylight still, & then I went back with him to the packing & very long after, as it seems now, he seemed surprised when I told him to go downstairs to the fire--I could do the rest of the work alone--& went like a relieved child. Just before he called me to "the Robing" he had said: "Oh! I feel so gay!" (We both thought of you at that moment Darling--& I for one was glad that you were away--for your life is his personally--& you are still to be the Good Star which could not be if you were entangled in all that has been so hard on him.) And so, Yum, happened "the event of my life"--the great turning-point --and the dear St. Sara's. In her diary, Sister Nivedita wrote of this unforgettable day more briefly, making the entry on November 5: "Our wonderful Sunday. Swami's release." Her letter to Miss MacLeod continued: Next morning he came over to Ridgely, and Mrs. Leggett managed to throw Mrs. R. Smith with him, knowing that she was hungry for a word. It seems that she asked him what his message was. And he answered "I have no message. I used to think I had, but now I know that I have nothing for the world--only for myself. I must break this dream." It sounds so limp and forceless, when I repeat it! And it was so great and stern as he told us of it. As far as is known, Mrs. Bull never made public (or, for that matter, private) claim to the title of sannyasini, which she clearly received in that spontaneous, brief, and informal ceremony at Ridgely. In her diary for Sunday, November 5, 1899, one finds only the quiet entry: "Swamiji gave the Sannyasi cloth and charge of work under S.R.K. and the Mother." As for Swamiji's bestowal upon her and Nivedita of his powers--or, at least, it would seem, of the power to carry out certain aspects of his mission--he did so in all solemnity. Many months earlier, at the close of 1898, as Mrs. Bull was leaving India, Swamiji had written to her, "Ere this I had only love for you, but recent developments prove that you are appointed by the Mother to watch over my life, hence, faith has been added to love! As regards me and my work I hold henceforth that you are inspired and will gladly shake off all responsibilities from my shoulder and abide by what the Mother ordains through you." During the months that were to follow the ceremony, he was often to remind Mrs. Bull of her role in his work and of his implicit faith in her judgment. But what actual and practical effect his bestowal of power upon these two disciples had in the implementation of his mission, what effect it had on Mrs. Bull's life, in what sense it constituted "the great turning point" for her and Nivedita, what "release" it actually gave to Swamiji--these are questions which would, I think, be hard to answer. Two days later Swamiji left Ridgely Manor for New York. And thus the "great summer"--so restful that it may have added almost three years to his life--that golden time, never to be repeated, came to an end.

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