Now, Colonel Olcott thought he recognised that particular quality of paper, and also, so far as it was legible, that seal-impression. The facsimile here necessarily makes it much clearer. In the original the impression was curiously faint and vague, as if the Master did not wish, in the Colonel’s case, to burst that seal upon him all at once; but preferred the manner of Tennyson’s Freedom, who “part by part to men revealed the fulness of her face.”
So Brer Rabbit continued to say nuffin’, and to lie low.
Presently Mr. William Q. Judge left on the same writing-table the following note (being scribbled on a torn-off scrap of paper, it also has rather a Mahatmic look. But that is accidental):—
“Dear Olcott” “looked” accordingly; and sure enough, in the ordinary envelope of a letter, previously opened and put by on the table, there was a piece of paper bearing a message with all the proper Mahatma-marks about it. And this time the Mahatma had taken heart and “precipitated” a decently clear impression of the seal.
And then the Colonel “smiled a sorter sickly smile.” For now he did recognise that seal. And this is its story. ***** Back in the palmy days of 1883, or ever the marvels of “H.P.B.” were besmirched by slanderous tongues, the Colonel was in a certain city of the Panjab. Passing an Urdu seal-engraver’s shop in the bazaar, he turned in and ordered the man to make a seal bearing the cryptograph signature which “H.P.B.” identified as that of the “Master of Wisdom,” Mahatma Morya.
