In the meantime, the purse that the Swami had carried from India was dwindling; for
things were much more expensive in America than he or his friends had thought. He
did not have enough to maintain him in Chicago until September. In a frantic mood he
asked help from the Theosophical Society, which professed warm friendship for India.
He was told that he would have to subscribe to the creed of the Society; but this he
refused to do because he did not believe in most of the Theosophical doctrines.
Thereupon the leader declined to give him any help. The Swami became desperate and
cabled to his friends in Madras for money.
Finally, however, someone advised him to go to Boston, where the cost of living was
cheaper, and in the train his picturesque dress, no less than his regal appearance,
attracted a wealthy lady who resided in the suburbs of the city. She cordially invited
him to be her guest, and he accepted, to save his dwindling purse. He was lodged at
'Breezy Meadows,' in Metcalf, Massachusetts, and his hostess, Miss Kate Sanborn, was
delighted to display to her inquisitive friends this strange curiosity from the Far East.
The Swami met a number of people, most of whom annoyed him by asking queer
questions regarding Hinduism and the social customs of India, about which they had
read in the tracts of Christian missionaries and sensational writers. However, there
came to him a few serious-minded people, and among these were Mrs. Johnson, the
lady superintendent of a women's prison, and J.H. Wright, a professor of Greek at
Harvard University. On the invitation of the superintendent, he visited the prison and
was impressed by the humanitarian attitude of its workers towards the inmates. At once
there came to his mind the sad plight of the masses of India and he wrote to a friend on
August 20, 1893:
How benevolently the inmates are treated, how they are reformed and sent back as
useful members of society — how grand, how beautiful, you must see to believe! And
oh, how my heart ached to think of what we think of poor, the low, in India. They have
no chance, no escape, no way to climb up. They sink lower and lower every day, they
feel the blows showered upon them by a cruel society, and they do not know whence
the blows come. They have forgotten that they too are men. And the result is slavery.
... Ah, tyrants! You do not know that the obverse is tyranny and the reverse, slavery.
Swami Vivekananda had no friends in this foreign land, yet he did not lose faith. For
had not a kind Providence looked after him during the uncertain days of his wandering
life? He wrote in the same letter: 'I am here amongst the children of the Son of Mary,
and the Lord Jesus will help me.'
The Swami was encouraged by Professor Wright to represent Hinduism in the
Parliament of Religions, since that was the only way he could be introduced to the
nation at large. When he announced, however, that he had no credentials, the professor
replied, 'To ask you, Swami, for your credentials is like asking the sun about its right to
shine.' He wrote about the Swami to a number of important people connected with the
Parliament, especially to the chairman of the committee on selection of delegates, who
was one of his friends, and said, 'Here is a man more learned than all our learned
professors put together.' Professor Wright bought the Swami railroad ticket for
Chicago.