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noontide meal, there was a shortage of a coffee cup and saucer. Some one
laughingly suggested that Madame should materialize an extra set. Madame
Blavatsky held a moment's mental communication with one of her distant Brothers
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and then indicated a particular spot, covered with grass, weeds, and shrubbery.
A gentleman of the party, with a knife, undertook to dig at the spot. A little
persistence brought him shortly to the rim of a white object, which proved to be
a cup, and close to it was a saucer, both of the design matching the other six
brought along from the Sinnett cupboard. The plant roots around the China pieces
were manifestly undisturbed by recent digging such as would have been necessary
if they had been "planted" in anticipation of their being needed. Moreover, when
the party reached home and Mrs. Sinnett counted their supply of cups and saucers
of that design, the new ones were found to be additional to their previous
stock. And none of that design could have been purchased in Simla.33
Before this same party had disbanded it was permitted to witness another feat of
equal strangeness. The gentleman who had dug up the buried pottery was so
impressed that he decided then and there to join the Theosophical Society. As
Col. Olcott, President of the Society, was in the party, all that was needed was
the usual parchment diploma. Madame Blavatsky agreed to ask the Master to
produce such a document for them. In a moment all were told to search in the
underbrush. It was soon found and used in the induction ceremony.
This eventful picnic brought forth still another wonder.
Every one of the water bottles brought along had been emptied when the need for
more coffee arose. The water in a neighborhood stream was unfit. A servant, sent
across the fields to obtain some at a brewery, stupidly returned without any. In
the dilemma Madame Blavatsky took one of the empty bottles, placed it in one of
the baskets, and in a moment took it out filled with good water.
Some days later the famous "brooch" incident occurred. The Sinnett party had
gone up the hill to spend an evening with Mr. and Mrs. A. O. Hume, who were
likewise much interested in the Blavatskian theories. Eleven persons were seated
around the table and some one hinted at the possibility of a psychic exploit.
Madame appeared disinclined, but suddenly gave a sign that the Master was
himself present. Then she asked Mrs. Hume if there was anything in particular
that she wished to have. Mrs. Hume thought of an old brooch which her mother had
given her long ago and which had been lost. Neither she nor Mr. Hume had thought
of it for years. She described it, saying it contained a lock of hair. The party
was told to search for it in the garden at a certain spot; and there it was
found. Mrs. Hume testified that it was the lost brooch, or one indistinguishable
from it.
According to the statements of Alice Gordon, a visitor at the Sinnett home,
Madame Blavatsky rolled a cigarette, and projected it ethereally to the house of
a Mrs. O'Meara in another part of Simla, in advance of Miss Gordon's going
thither. To identify it she tore off a small corner of the wrapper jaggedly, and
gave it to Miss Gordon. The latter found it at the other home and the corner
piece matched.
Captain P. J. Maitland recites a "cigarette" incident which occurred in Mr.
Sinnett's drawing room. Madame took two cigarette papers, with a pencil drew
several parallel lines clear across the face of both, then tore off across these
lines a piece of the end of each paper and handed the short end pieces to
Captain Maitland; then she rolled cigarettes out of the two larger portions,
moistened them on her tongue, and caused them to disappear from her hands. The
Captain was told he would find one on the piano and the other on a bracket. He
found them there, still moist along the "seam," and unrolling them found that
the ragged edges of the torn sections and the pencil lines exactly matched.
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Some days later came the "pillow incident." Mr. Sinnett had the impression that
he had been in communication with the Master one night. During the course of an
outing to a nearby hill the following day, Madame Blavatsky turned to him (he
had not mentioned his experience to her) and asked him where he would like some
evidence of the Master's visit to him to appear. Thinking to choose a most
unlikely place, he thought of the inside of a cushion against which one of the
ladies was leaning. Then he changed to another. Cutting the latter open, they
found among the feathers, inside two cloth casings, a little note in the now
familiar Mahatma script, in the writing on which were the phrases-"the
difficulty you spoke of last night" and "corresponding through-pillows!" While
he was reading this his wife discovered a brooch in the feathers. It was one
which she had left at home.
Perhaps it was these cigarette feats which assured Madame Blavatsky that she now
had sufficient power to dispatch a long letter to her Mahatma mentors. Mr.
Sinnett first suggested the idea to her, and her success in that first attempt
was the beginning of one of the most eventful and unique correspondences in the
world's history. It began his exchange of letters with the Master Koot Hoomi Lal
Singh (abbreviated usually to K.H.), on which Theosophy so largely rests.
On several telegrams received by Mr. Sinnett were snatches of writing in K.H.'s
hand speaking of events that transpired after the telegram had been sent.
Replies were received a number of times in less time than it would have taken
Madame Blavatsky to write them (instantaneously in a few cases), yet they dealt
in specific detail with the material in his own missives. More than once his
unexpressed doubts and queries were treated. In many cases his own letter in a
sealed envelope would remain in sight and within a very short interval (thirty
seconds in one instance) be found to contain the distant Master's reply, folded
inside his own sheets, with an appropriate answer,--the seal not even having
been broken. Sometimes he would place his letter in plain view on the table, and
shortly it would be gone. For a time when the Master K.H. was called away to
other business, Mr. Sinnett continued to receive communications from the brother
Adept, Master Morya, while Madame Blavatsky was hundreds of miles away. They
continued in the distant absence of both H.P.B. and Col. Olcott. And not only
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