so odd a
fashion. It is one on which anybody interested in such matters can form
an individual judgment.

THE MAHATMA[*]

[*] Mahatma, "great-souled." "One of a class of persons with
preter-natural powers, imagined to exist in India and
Thibet."--_New English Dictionary_.

Everyone has seen a hare, either crouched or running in the fields,
or hanging dead in a poulterer's shop, or lastly pathetic, even
dreadful-looking and in this form almost indistinguishable from a
skinned cat, on the domestic table. But not many people have met a
Mahatma, at least to their knowledge. Not many people know even who or
what a Mahatma is. The majority of those who chance to have heard the
title are apt to confuse it with another, that of Mad Hatter.

This is even done of malice prepense (especially, for obvious reasons,
if a hare is in any way concerned) in scorn, not in ignorance, by
persons who are well acquainted with the real meaning of the word and
even with its Sanscrit origin. The truth is that an incredulous Western
world puts no faith in Mahatmas. To it a Mahatma is a kind of spiritual
Mrs. Harris, giving an address in Thibet at which no letters are
delivered. Either, it says, there is no such person, or he is a
fraudulent scamp with no greater occult powers--well, than a hare.

I confess that this view of Mahatmas is one that does not surprise me
in the least. I never met, and I scarcely expect to meet, an individual
entitled to set "Mahatma" after his name. Certainly _I_ have no right to
do so, who only took that title on the spur of the moment when the Hare
asked me how I was called, and now make use of it as a _nom-de-plume_.
It is true there is Jorsen, by whose order, for it amounts to that, I
publish this history. For aught I know Jorsen may be a Mahatma, but he
does not in the least look the part.

Imagine a bluff person with a strong, hard face, piercing grey eyes, and
very prominent, bushy eyebrows, of about fifty or sixty years of age.
Add a Scotch accent and a meerschaum pipe, which he smokes even when he
is wearing a frock coat and a tall hat, and you have Jorsen. I believe
that he lives somewhere in the country, is well off, and practises
gardening. If so he has never asked me to his place, and I only meet him
when he comes to Town, as I understand, to visit flower-shows.

Then I always meet him because he orders me to do so, not by letter or
by word of mouth but in quite a different wa