“Be these juggling fiends no more believed, that palter with us in a double sense!”—“Macbeth.”
“Masters, it is proved already that you are little better than false knaves.”—“Much Ado About Nothing.”
While the Mahatma was thus stealthily undermining the president, he was also busy strengthening his own outworks. In December one of the doubting ones, the Mr. Keightley who had been making up his mind whether to believe his own eyes ever since June, 1890, received in India a letter from Mr. Judge fortifying him against the heterodox influences to which he would be exposed on Colonel Olcott’s return to that country.
THE “FOLLOW JUDGE AND STICK” MISSIVE.
Mr. Judge warned his “dear Bert” that Olcott would try to shake his faith in the genuineness of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma-missives; that he might even have the baseness to suggest that they were fabricated by Mr. Judge himself. On opening this letter, Mr. Keightley found a small slip of peculiar paper, which turned out (on a prosaic scrutiny) to be the sort of tissue which is used to separate the sheets of typewriting transfer paper. On this slip appeared in Mahatmic script the words:—
Judge leads right. Follow him and stick!
There was, however, no seal impression. The Mahatma had grown chary of using that seal. From the material of this missive we gather that the Mahatma is not so remote from typewriters as one would expect in the Himalayas; from its diction we learn that, whatever the failings of his English, the august being has a racy command of Yankee.
I may remark here that when Mahatmas “precipitate” their own notepaper, as well as the writing upon it, it has always been the etiquette that the former should have an Indian look about it, however European the latter might be. Even tissue, as in this case, is considered more in keeping than commonplace stationery, with, perhaps, the watermark of some English firm upon it. But the “make” preferred, alike now and in the Blavatsky days, is a peculiar sort of hand-made rice-paper, which the Psychical Researchers had some difficulty in tracking to the maker’s. They were not assisted by Colonel Olcott. But now, the same mystic paper having turned up in the productions of Mr. Judge’s Mahatma (borrowed, perhaps, at the same time as the seal?) the Colonel resolves the mystery at once. Wishing to suggest that Mr. Judge got it ready-made from Madame Blavatsky, he mentions that Madame had gone about with a good supply of it, adding that it was originally bought in Cashmere. He had bought it himself at Jammos, in fact, as long ago as 1883, just as he had also been the purchaser of the brass seal; and just as he explains that the seal was got merely as a “playful present,” so he represents the original purpose of the Cashmere stationery as the humble one of “packing books—it being both cheap and strong.” From parcels post to astral notepaper is a distinct rise. But who first promoted it? Another side-light unintentionally thrown on the old Blavatsky days!
But to return to Mr. Judge’s Mahatma. His last attempt to bring Colonel Olcott to a better mind by persuasion was made that autumn. In October he had resorted to a bold device for overcoming scepticism, which he and Mahatma Koot Hoomi had patented in the early Blavatsky days—that of waylaying (astrally, of course) the post-bag of some disconnected and quite unconscious correspondent of the sceptic, and so introducing a message through an obviously untainted channel. For instance, Mr. Hume once “got a note from Koot Hoomi inside a letter received through the post from a person wholly unconnected with our occult pursuits, who was writing to him on some municipal business.” (“Occult World,” p. 21.) The letter happened to have a large and noticeable envelope, and long after, in the days of disillusion, Mr. Hume discovered that Madame’s servant Babula had carried off just such a letter from the postman for Madame, and then returned it to him with an apology for the mistake. (S. P. R. Report, p. 275.)
THE “JUDGE IS NOT THE FORGER” MISSIVE.