The Mahatma and the Hare | Page 3

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Etext prepared by John Bickers, [email protected] Dagny,
[email protected] and Emma Dudding, [email protected]

The Mahatma and the Hare A Dream Story
by H. Rider Haggard

"Ultimately a good hare was found which took the field at . . . There the
hounds pressed her, and on the hunt arriving at the edge of the cliff the
hare could be seen crossing the beach and going right out to sea. A boat
was procured, and the master and some others rowed out to her just as
she drowned, and, bringing the body in, gave it to the hounds. A hare
swimming out to sea is a sight not often witnessed."--/Local paper,
January/ 1911.
". . . A long check occurred in the latter part of this hunt, the hare
having laid up in a hedgerow, from which she was at last evicted by a
crack of the whip. Her next place of refuge was a horse-pond, which
she tried to swim, but got stuck in the ice midway, and was sinking,
when the huntsman went in after her. It was a novel sight to see
huntsman and hare being lifted over a wall out of the pond, the eager
pack waiting for their prey behind the wall."--/Local paper, February/
1911.
*****
The author supposes that the first of the above extracts must have
impressed him. At any rate, on the night after the reading of it, just as
he went to sleep, or on the following morning just as he awoke, he
cannot tell which, there came to him the title and the outlines of this
fantasy, including the command with which it ends. With a particular
clearness did he seem to see the picture of the Great White Road,

"straight as the way of the Spirit, and broad as the breast of Death," and
of the little Hare travelling towards the awful Gates.
Like the Mahatma of this fable, he expresses no opinion as to the merits
of the controversy between the Red-faced Man and the Hare that,
without search on his own part, presented itself to his mind in 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