The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda/Volume 9/Letters - Fifth Series/XLIX Mother
XLIX
To Mrs. G. W. Hale
54 W. 33., NEW YORK
18 March [February] 1895
DEAR MOTHER,
I am sure you are all right by this time. The babies write from time to time
and so I get your news regularly. Miss Mary is in a lecturing mood now —
good for her. Hope she will not let her energies fritter away now — a penny
saved is a penny gained. Sister Isabel[le] has sent me the French Books and
the Calcutta pamphlets have arrived, but the big Sanskrit books ought to
come. I want them badly. Make them payable here, if possible, or I will send
you the postage.
I am doing very well. Only some of these big dinners kept me late, and I returned home at 2 o'clock in the morning several days. Tonight I am going to one of these. This will be the last of its kind. So much keeping up the night is not good for me. Every day from 11 to 1 o'clock I have classes in my rooms and I talk [to] them till they [grow] tired. The Brooklyn course ended yesterday. Another lecture I have there next Monday.
Bean soup and rice or barley is now my general diet. I am faring well.
Financially I am making the ends meet and nothing more because I do not
charge anything for the classes I have in my rooms. And the public lectures
have to go through so many hands.
I have a good many lectures planned ahead in New York, which I hope to
deliver by and by. Sister Isabel wrote to me a beautiful letter and she does
so much for me. My eternal gratitude to her.
Baby[6]* has stopped writing; I do not know why.
Kindly tell Baby to send me a little Sanskrit book which came from India. I forgot to bring it over. I want to translate some passages from it.
Mr. [Charles M.] Higgins is full of joy. It was he who planned all this for me, and he is so glad that everything succeeded so well.
Mrs. Guernsey is going to give up this house and going to some other house.
Miss [Florence] Guernsey wants to marry but her father and mother do not
like it at all. I am very sorry for her, poor "Sister Jenny"[7]* — and so
many men are after her. Here is a very rich railway gentleman called Mr.
[Austin] Corbin; his only daughter, Miss [Anna] Corbin, is very much
interested in me. And though she is one of the leaders of the 400,[8]* she
is very intellectual and spiritual too, in a way. Their house is always
chock full of swells and foreign aristocracy. Princes and Barons and whatnot
from all over the world. Some of these foreigners are very bright. I am
sorry your home-manufactured aristocracy is not very interesting. Behind her
parlor she has a long arbour with all sorts of palms and seats and electric
light. There I will have a little class next week of a score of
long-pockets. The Fun is not bad. "This world is a great humbug after all",
Mother. "God alone is real; everything else is a dream only." Mother
Temple[9]* says she does not like to be bossed by you and that is why she
does not come to Chicago. She is very happy nearby. Between swells and
Delmonico and Waldorf dinners, my health was going to be injured. So I
quickly turned a thorough vegetarian to avoid all invitations. The rich are
really the salt of this world — they are neither food nor drink. Goodbye for
the present.
Your ever affectionate Son,
VIVEKANANDA