Chapter (অধ্যায়): EPISTLES PAGE-24Page: 24 of 537
He will yet raise the starving and ignorant millions of India. A railway porter here is better educated than many of your young men and most of your princes. Every American woman has far better education than can be conceived of by the majority of Hindu women. Why cannot we have the same education? We must.
Think not that you are poor; money is not power, but goodness, holiness. Come and see how it is so all over the world.
Yours with blessings,
Vivekananda
PS. By the bye, your uncle's paper was the most curious phenomenon I ever saw. It was like a tradesman's catalogue, and it was not thought fit to be read in the Parliament. So Narasimhacharya read a few extracts from it in a side hall, and nobody understood a word of it. Do not tell him of it. It is a great art to press the largest amount of thought into the smallest number of words. Even Manilal Dvivedi's paper had to be cut very short. More than a thousand papers were read, and there was no time to give to such wild perorations. I had a good long time given to me over the ordinary half hour, . . . because the most popular speakers were always put down last, to hold the audience. And Lord bless them, what sympathy they have, and what patience! They would sit from ten o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock at night-only a recess of half an hour for a meal, and paper after paper read, most of them very trivial, but they would wait and wait to hear their favourites.
Dharmapala of Ceylon was one of the favourites. But unfortunately he was not a good speaker. He had only quotations from Max Muller and Rhys Davids to give them. He is a very sweet man, and we became very intimate during the Parliament