Enclosed in Mad. B.'s from Bombay. Received January 30th, 1881.
There is no fault on your part in the whole matter. I am sorry you should think I am imputing any fault to you. If anything, you might almost feel you had to blame me for giving you hopes without having the shadow of such a right. I ought to have been less optimistic and then you would have been less sanguine in your expectations. I really feel as if I had wronged you! Happy, thrice happy and blessed are they, who have never consented to visit the world beyond their snow-capped mountains; whose physical eyes have never lost sight of for one day of the endless ranges of hills, and the long unbroken line of eternal snows! Verily and indeed, do they live in, and have found their Ultima Thule. . . .
Why say, you are a victim of circumstances, since nothing is yet seriously changed and that much, if not all, depends upon future developments? You were not asked or expected to revolutionize your life-habits, but at the same time you were warned not to expect too much as you are. If you read between the lines you must have remarked what I said about the very narrow margin left to me for doing as I choose in the matter. But despond not, for it is all but a matter of time. The world was not evolved between two monsoons, my good friend. If you had come to me as a boy of 17, before the world had put its heavy hand upon you, your task would have been twenty-fold easier. And now, we must take you, and you must see yourself as you are, not as the ideal human image which our emotional fancy always projects for us upon the glass. Be patient, friend and brother; and I must repeat again — be our helpful co-worker; but in your own sphere, and according to your ripest judgment. Since our venerable Hobilgan has decreed in his wise prevision that I had no right to encourage you to enter a path, where you would have to roll the stone of Sisyphus, held back as you surely would be by your previous and most sacred duties — we really must wait. I know your motives are sincere and true, and that a real change, and in the right direction, has come over you, though even to yourself that change is imperceptible. And — the chiefs know it too. But, say they — motives are vapours, as attenuated as the atmospheric moisture: and, as the latter develops its dynamic energy for man's use only when concentrated and applied as steam or hydraulic power, so the practical value of good motives is best seen when they take the form of deeds. . . . "Yes, we will wait and see" — they say. And now I have told you as much as I ever had the right to say. You have more than once already helped this Society, even though you did not care for it yourself, and these deeds are upon record. Nay — they are even more meritorious in you, than they would in anyone else, considering your well grounded ideas of that poor organization at present. And, you have thereby won a friend — one, far higher and better than myself — and one who will in future help me to defend your cause, able as he is, to do it far more effectually than I can, for he belongs to the "foreign Section."
I believe I have laid down for you the general lines on which we wish the work of organizing — if possible — the Anglo-Indian Branch to proceed: the details must be left to you — if you are still willing to help me.
If you have anything to say or ask any questions, you better write to me and I will always answer your letters. But, ask for no phenomena for a while, as it is but such paltry manifestations which now stand in your way.
Yours ever truly,
K. H.
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