overeignty reveal the beauty of
representative government, and as the burning-glass shows the power of
concentrating the rays, so does the combined power of the multitude
reveal the beauty of united effort to carry a grand measure.

CHAPTER XXIII.

WOMAN AND THEOLOGY.

Returning from Europe in the autumn of 1883, after visiting a large
circle of relatives and friends, I spent six weeks with my cousin,
Elizabeth Smith Miller, at her home at Geneva, on Seneca Lake.

Through Miss Frances Lord, a woman of rare culture and research, my
daughter and I had become interested in the school of theosophy, and
read "Isis Unveiled," by Madame Blavatsky, Sinnett's works on the
"Occult World," and "The Perfect Way," by Anna Kingsford. Full of these
ideas, I soon interested my cousins in the subject, and we resolved to
explore, as far as possible, some of these Eastern mysteries, of which
we had heard so much. We looked in all directions to find some pilot to
start us on the right course. We heard that Gerald Massey was in New
York city, lecturing on "The Devil," "Ghosts," and "Evil Spirits"
generally, so we invited him to visit us and give a course of lectures
in Geneva. But, unfortunately, he was ill, and could not open new fields
of thought to us at that time, though we were very desirous to get a
glimpse into the unknown world, and hold converse with the immortals. As
I soon left Geneva with my daughter, Mrs. Stanton Lawrence, our occult
studies were, for a time, abandoned.

My daughter and I often talked of writing a story, she describing the
characters and their environments and I attending to the philosophy and
soliloquies. As I had no special duties in prospect, we decided that
this was the time to make our experiment. Accordingly we hastened to the
family homestead at Johnstown, New York, where we could be entirely
alone. Friends on all sides wondered what had brought us there in the
depth of the winter. But we kept our secret, and set ourselves to work
with diligence, and after three months our story was finished to our
entire satisfaction. We felt sure that everyone who read it would be
deeply interested and that we should readily find a publisher. We
thought of "Our Romance" the first thing in the morning and talked of it
the last thing at night. But alas! friendly critics who read our story
pointed out its defects, and in due time we reached their conclusions,
and the unpublished manuscript now rests in a pige