healers, and groups representing similar views participated in the Conference.
The Swami in the course of a letter to the Hale sisters of Chicago, wrote on July 31,
1894, with his usual humour about the people who attended the meetings:
They have a lively time and sometimes all of them wear what you call your scientific
dress the whole day. They have lectures almost every day. One Mr. Colville from
Boston is here. He speaks every day, it is said, under spirit control. The editor of the
Universal Truth from the top floor of Jimmy Mills has settled herself down here. She is
conducting religious services and holding classes to heal all manner of diseases, and
very soon I expect them to be giving eyes to the blind, etc., etc. After all, it is a queer
gathering. They do not care much about social laws and are quite free and happy....
There is a Mr. Wood of Boston here, who is one of the great lights of your sect. But he
objects to belonging to the sect of Mrs. Whirlpool. So he calls himself a mental healer
of metaphysical, chemico, physical-religioso, what-not, etc.
Yesterday there was a tremendous cyclone which gave a good 'treatment' to the tents.
The big tent under which they held the lectures developed so much spirituality under
the treatment that it entirely disappeared from mortal gaze, and about two hundred
chairs were dancing about the grounds under spiritual ecstasy. Mrs. Figs of Mills
Company gives a class every morning, and Mrs. Mills is jumping all about the place.
They are all in high spirits. I am especially glad for Cora, for she suffered a good deal
last winter and a little hilarity would do her good. You would be astounded with the
liberty they enjoy in the camps, but they are very good and pure people — a little
erratic, that is all.
Regarding his own work at Greenacre, the Swami wrote in the same letter:
The other night the camp people all went to sleep under a pine tree under which I sit
every morning a la India and talk to them. Of course I went with them and we had a
nice night under the stars, sleeping on the lap of Mother Earth, and I enjoyed every bit
of it. I cannot describe to you that night's glories — after the year of brutal life that I
have led, to sleep on the ground, to mediate under the tree in the forest! The inn people
are more or less well-to-do, and the camp people are healthy, young, sincere, and holy
men and women. I teach them all Sivoham, Sivoham—'I am Siva, I am Siva' — and
they all repeat it, innocent and pure as they are, and brave beyond all bounds, and I am
so happy and glorified.
Thank God for making me poor! Thank God for making these children in the tents
poor! The dudes and dudines are in the hotel, but iron-bound nerves, souls of triple
steel, and spirits of fire are in the camp. If you had seen them yesterday, when the rain
was falling in torrents and the cyclone was overturning everything — hanging on to
their tent-strings to keep them from being blown off, and standing on the majesty of