Speaking in the Hall of Science on August 30, 1891, three months after Madame Blavatsky’s death, Mrs. Besant said:—
“You have known me in this hall for sixteen and a half years. You have never known me tell a lie. (‘No, never,’ and loud cheers.) I tell you that since Madame Blavatsky left I have had letters in the same handwriting as the letters which she received. (Sensation.) Unless you think dead persons can write, surely that is a remarkable fact. You are surprised; I do not ask you to believe me; but I tell you it is so. All the evidence I had of the existence of Madame Blavatsky’s teachers of the so-called abnormal powers came through her. It is not so now. Unless even sense can at the same time deceive me, unless a person can at the same time be sane and insane, I have exactly the same certainty for the truth of the statements I have made as I know that you are here. I refuse to be false to the knowledge of my intellect and the perceptions of my reasoning faculties.”
It is no wonder that the reporter had to interpolate the word “Sensation.” The audience was one rather of Freethinkers than of Theosophists; the hall itself was identified with previous rhetorical successes of Mrs. Besant as the prophetess of Materialism. The thing was dramatically done, and was well calculated to impress on the outside public the fact that the personal reputation of Mrs. Besant for intelligence and honesty was now pledged to the genuineness of Theosophical wonder-working. In an interview in the Pall Mall Gazette of September 1, 1891, Mrs. Besant carried her statement still further, and pledged herself definitely to “precipitation”:—
“ ‘These letters are from a Mahatma whose pupil you are?’
“Mrs. Besant nodded assent.
“ ‘Did they just come through the post?’ our representative asked.
“But here he had hit the mystery.
“ ‘No, I did not receive the letters through the post,’ the lady replied. ‘They did come in what some would call a miraculous fashion, though to us Theosophists it is perfectly natural. The letters
