Hermione and her Little Group of Serious Thinkers | Page 7

know, I have the most remarkable intuition at times! Have I ever told you that I'm fright- fully psychic?
Mr. Finch, the poet -- you know Fothergil Finch, don't you? -- he writes vers libre and poetry both -- Mr. Finch said to me the other evening, "You are EXTREMELY psychic!"
"How did you know it?" I asked him.
"Ah!" he said, "how DOES one know these things?"
And how true that is, when you come to think it over! How DOES one know?
He has the great magnetic eyes! I could feel them drawing my thoughts from me as we talked.
"You have a secret," he said.
"Yes," I said. And to myself I added, "Alas!"
"Your secret is," he said, "that there is a difference between you and the other girls."
It was positively uncanny! I'VE felt that for years! But no one else had ever suspected it before.
"Mr. Finch," I said, "I must have TOLD you that -- or else it was just a wild guess. You COULDN'T have gotten it psychically. HOW did you know it?"
"One knows these things," he said -- a trifle sadly, I thought. "They come to one -- out of the
Silences; one knows not how. It is better not to ask how! It is better not to question! It is better to accept! Do you not feel it so?
Sometimes I think that Fothergil Finch is the only man who has ever understood me.
You see, I am Dual in my personality.
There is the real Ego, and there is the Alter Ego.
And, besides these, I have so many moods which do not come from either one of my Egos! They come from my Subliminal Consciousness!
Isn't the Subliminal Consciousness wonderful; simply WONDERFUL?
We're going to take it up in a serious way some evening next week, and thresh it out thoroughly.
But I must run along. I have an engagement with my dressmaker at two o'clock. You know, I've really found one who can make my gowns interpret my inner spirit.

THE SWAMI BRANDRANATH
I HEARD such a lovely lecture the other night on the Cosmos.
A Little Group of Advanced Women that I belong to are specializing this winter on the Cosmos.
We took it up, you know, because the other topics we were studying included it so frequently. And it's wonderful, really WONDERFUL!
Of course, an untrained mind will grapple with it in vain. One's interest must be serious and sincere. One must devote time to it.,
Otherwise one will get more harm than good out of it, you know.
It's like the Russian dances that way.
They are so primal, those dances! And all those primal things are dangerous, don't you think? Unless one has poise!
It's odd, too, that some of the most primal people have the most poise, isn't it?
The Swami Brandranath was like that. I've told you bout the Swami Brandramath, haven't I?
He wore such lovely robes! You can't buy silk like that in this country.
And he had such a PURE look in this eyes. So many of these magnetic people lack that pure look, you know.
He used to give talks to a Little Group of Serious Thinkers I belong to.
He taught us to go into the Silences -- only we never quite learned, for some of the girls would giggle. There are always people like that. The dear Swami! -- he was so patient! It was Occidental levity, he said, and we couldn't help it.
That is one of the main differences between the Orient and the Occident, you know.
How wonderful they are, the Orientals. And just think of India, with all its yogis and bazaars and mahatmas and howdahs and rajahs and things!
He was a Brahmin, the Swami was. A Brahmin and a Burman are the same thing, you know.
It's a caste, like belonging to one of our best families.
The Swami explained about the marks of caste, and so forth, to us.
And then one of the girls asked him if he was tattooed!
The idea!

FOTHERGIL FINCH, THE POET OF REVOLT
Isn't it odd how some of the most radical and advanced and virile of the leaders in the New Art and the New Thought don't look it at all?
There's Fothergil Finch, for instance. Nobody could be more virile than Fothy is in his Soul. Fothy's Inner Ego, if you get what I mean, is a Giant in Revolt all the time.
And yet to look at Fothy you wouldn't think he was a Modern Cave Man. Not that he looks like a weakling, you know. Butwell, if you get what I mean -- you'd think Fothy might write about violets instead of thunderbolts.
Dear Papa is ENTIRELY mistaken about him.
Only yesterday dear papa said to me, "Hermione, if you don't keep that damned little vers libre run away from here I'll put him to work, and he'll die of it."
But you couldn't expect Papa to appreciate Fothy. Papa is SO reactionary and