Home / Complete-Works / Volume 9 / Letters – Fifth Series /
The two younger daughters were waiting for me with a carriage. So everything was all right. I hope the lecture will be a success, as one of the girls said the tickets are selling like hot cakes. Here I found a letter from Mr. Palmer awaiting me with a request that I should come over to his house and be his guest.
Could not go last night. He will come in the course of the day to take me over. As I am going over to Mr. Palmer’s, I have not opened the awfully-packed bag. The very idea of repacking seems to me to be hopeless. So I could not shave this morning. However, I hope to shave during the course of the day. I am thinking of going over to Boston and New York just now, as the Michigan cities I can come and take over in summer; but the fashionables of New York and Boston will fly off. Lord will show the way.
Mrs. Bagley and all the family are heartily glad at my return and people are again coming in to see me.
The photographer here has sent me some of the pictures he made. They are positively villainous — Mrs. Bagley does not like them at all. The real fact is that between the two photos my face has become so fat and heavy — what can the poor photographers do?
Kindly send over four copies of photographs. Not yet made any arrangement with Holden. (A lecture agent at Detroit.) Everything promises to be very nice. “Ssenator Ppalmer”2 is a very nice gentleman and very kind to me. He has got a French chef — Lord bless his stomach! I am trying to starve and the whole world is against me!! He used to give the best dinners in all Washington! Hopeless! I am resigned!
I will write more from Mr. Palmer’s house.
If the Himalayas become the inkpot, the ocean ink, if the heavenly eternal Devadaroo3 becomes the pen, and if the sky itself becomes paper, still I would not be able to write a drop of the debt of gratitude I owe to you and yours. Kindly convey my love to the four full notes and the four half notes of the Hale gamut.4
May the blessings of the Lord be upon you and yours ever and ever.
Ever yours in grateful affection,
VIVEKANANDA.
- ^On Friday, February 23, 1894, Swami Vivekananda had left Detroit for Ada, Ohio, and from there he may have returned to Chicago. It appears that his Detroit admirers called him back to fight the Christian onslaught which had been launched against him.
- ^Because Mr. T. W. Palmer was a stammerer, Swami Vivekananda spelled his name this way.
- ^Lit., “a tree of angels”; in Sanskrit Deva means “god” or “angel” and Dāru means “tree” or “timber”
- ^The four full notes of the Hale family were Mr. and Mrs. G. W. Hale and Mr. and Mrs. James Matthews; the half notes were Harriet and Mary Hale and Harriet and Isabelle McKindley — respectively, the daughters and nieces of Mrs. G. W. Hale.