Great excitement last night. It was the regular night of —— T.S. and —— was to speak. We got there at 8:15, and it was full. He began and had just been fifteen minutes when it was discovered that the building was on fire. We stopped and let 1,000 people in the various halls get out, then quietly went and none were hurt, only two, —— and ——, getting a few quarts of water from a burst hose.

It was a queer exit, for we went downstairs beside the elevator, and glass, bricks and water were falling down the light well, while the fire on the top stories of it roared and made a fine light, and streams of fire ran down the oily elevator pipes on the other side; and firemen pulled up hose neck or nothing as we got away. It was ——'s own meeting, and it ended in fire! None of the great psychics present had had the remotest premonition, but one invented afterwards an ex post facto sense of terror.

Tell —— the time has passed for him to vacillate; he knows his guru: she was and is H. P. B.; let him reflect ere he does that which, in wrecking her life and fame, will wreck his own life by leaving him where nothing that is true may be seen.... Silence is useful now and then, but silence sometimes is a thing that speaks too loud. I am his friend and will help.57 No one can hurt him but himself; his work and sacrifice were noble and none can point at him.

See what I said in the opening vol. of The Path: that the study of what is now called "practical occultism" was not the object of that journal. "We regard it as incidental to the journey along the path. The traveller, in going from one city to another, has perhaps to cross several rivers; maybe his conveyance fails him and he is obliged to swim, or he must, in order to pass a great mountain, know engineering in order to tunnel through it, or is compelled to exercise the art of locating his exact position by observation of the sun: but all that is only incidental to his main object of reaching his............