1231 PINE STREET,
SAN FRANCISCO,
March 2nd 1900.

DEAR JOE—

Your note enclosing two from France and three from India just received. I have had general good news and am happy.

Financially, I have got $300 in Los Angeles. About Mrs. Bowler [1] , she has about a hundred odd dollars in cash. Mrs. Hendrick and she have not paid up as yet. That money—$300 in all—is with her. She will send it to me whenever I write.

ⓘ[1] Mrs. Emeline F. Bowler, president of the Pasadena Shakespeare Club and a friend of Swami Vivekananda in southern California.

Rev. Benjamin Fay Mills [1] , a very popular Unitarian preacher in Oakland, invited me from here and paid the fare to San Francisco. I have spoken twice in Oakland to 1500 people each time. Last time I got from collection $30. I am going to have classes at 50 cents admission each.

ⓘ[1] Minister of the First Unitarian Church in Oakland, where Swami Vivekananda spoke several times.

San Francisco had one lecture the other night [February 23] at 50¢ each. It paid its expenses. This Monday [Sunday?] I am going to speak free—after that a class.

I went to see Mrs. Hurst [Hearst] [1] . She was not at home. I left a card—so with Prof. Le Conte. [2]

ⓘ[1] Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst, mother of the newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst.

[2] Probably Joseph Le Conte, a well-known geologist, then in his seventies, and a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.

Mary [Hale] writes that you wrote her of my coming any day to the East. I don’t know. Here I have a large following—ready-made by my books. Will get some money, not much. St. Francis [Francis Leggett] may put the money in the bank for me—but can that be done without my signature? And I am here? It is good if it can be done. Did you see any possibility of my books being sold for good to any publisher?

The French invitation [1] is all right. But it seems impossible to write any decent paper on the subject we chose. Because if I have to lecture and make money, very little time will be left for anything else. Again, I can not find any books (Sanskrit) here. So let me try to make a little money if I can and go to France all the same, but send them no paper. No scholarly work can be done in this haphazard and hurried fashion. It means time and study.

ⓘ[1] An invitation to speak in September at the Congress of the History of Religions at the Paris Exposition.

Shall I write to Mr. [Gerald] Nobel an acknowledgement and thanks? Write to me fully on these subjects if you can before you leave [for Europe]. My health is going on the same way. The gas is there more or less and this city is all climbing up[hill]—that tires me much.

With all love,

Yours affectionately,
VIVEKANANDA.

P.S. Did anybody else respond to Mrs. Leggett’s call?