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XIII
To Mrs. G. W. Hale
DETROIT
16 March 1894
DEAR MOTHER,
Since my last, there has been nothing of interest here. Except that Mr. Palmer is a very hearty, jolly, good old man and very rich. He has been uniformly kind to me. Tomorrow I go back to Mrs. Bagley’s because I am afraid she is rather uneasy at my long stay here. I am shrewd enough to know that in every country in general, and America in particular, “she” is the real operator at the nose string.
I am going to lecture here on Monday1 and in two places near the town on Tuesday and Wednesday.2 I do not remember the lady you refer me to,3 and she is in Lynn; what is Lynn, where on the globe its position is — I do not know.4 I want to go to Boston. What good would it do me by stopping at Lynn? Kindly give me a more particular idea. Nor could I read the name of the lady at whose house you say I met the lady. However, I am in no way very anxious. I am taking life very easy in my natural way. I have no particular wish to go anywhere, Boston or no Boston. I am just in a nice come-what-may mood. Something should turn up, bad or good. I have enough now to pay my passage back and a little sight-seeing to boot. As to my plans of work, I am fully convinced that at the rate it is progressing I will have to come back four or five times to put it in any shape.
As to informing others and doing good that way, I have failed to persuade myself that I have really anything to convey to the world. So I am very happy just now and quite at my ease. With almost nobody in this vast house and a cigar between my lips, I am dreaming just now and philosophising upon that work fever which was upon me. It is all nonsense. I am nothing, the world is nothing, the Lord alone is the only worker. We are simply tools in His hands etc., etc., etc. Have you got the Alaska information? If so, kindly send it to me c/o Mrs. Bagley.
Are you coming to the East this summer? With eternal gratitude and love,
Your son,
VIVEKANANDA.
- ^On Monday, March 19, Swami Vivekananda spoke at the Detroit Auditorium on “Buddhism, the Religion of the Light of Asia.”
- ^On Tuesday, March 20, Swami Vivekananda delivered a lecture on Hinduism at Bay City, Michigan; and on Wednesday, March 21, he spoke on the “Harmony of Religions at Saginaw, Michigan.
- ^Mrs. Francis W. Breed, a social leader of Lynn and the wife of an extremely wealthy boot and shoe manufacturer.
- ^Lynn, Massachusetts, a small industrial town on Massachusetts bay, ten miles north of Boston.