Theos-Talk Archives (May 2000 Message tt00234)

My First Meeting with William Quan Judge
By Katherine Tingley

I Remember that day well. Snow was falling when I started out in the morning 
to go down to the Mission to meet those discouraged persons in their 
poverty, an ordinary snowstorm that gave little warning of the tremendous 
blizzard that was to rage later in the day, the fury of which was beginning 
to be apparent when I arrived. In that fierce storm, now increasing 
momently, over six hundred women and children were waiting in the street for 
relief. They were but half-dressed -- they had pawned most of their clothes 
-- they were perishing with the cold; they were wailing out loud, many of 
them, and clamoring for help. . . . I could not send them away hungry, and 
it would be some little time yet before the food that was being prepared 
would be ready.

There was nothing for it but for me to go out and talk to them, to keep them 
as well as I could in humor and patience while waiting. . . . All the while 
the crowd and the storm kept increasing, and with them my own distress, till 
I felt my heart almost at breaking-point to see so much keen misery and to 
know that all I could do was so wretchedly little, so ineffectual: to lift 
them out of their present trouble and keep them secure against as bad or 
worse tomorrow or the next day.

Suddenly my attention was caught by a pale face on the outskirts of the 
crowd -- the face of a man standing under an umbrella, with his coat collar 
turned up and buttoned round his neck and his hat low down over his face -- 
clearly not one of the strikers; a gentleman, I thought, suddenly reduced to 
destitution and ashamed to come forward with the rest and ask for the food 
he sorely needed. A face fine of feature and strikingly noble of expression, 
with a look of grave sadness, too, and of sickness -- caused by hunger no 
doubt. All this flashed through my mind in that one glance, and I turned to 
call one of our attendants to send her to him. But when I looked round 
again, he was gone.

Two days later he presented his card at my home: it was William Quan Judge, 
a leader of the Theosophical movement and H. P. Blavatsky's successor. He 
told me he had read of my work among the poor and had gone down there to see 
it for himself. He had found it, so far, practical and valuable, he said; 
but also had divined my discontent with it and my hunger for something that 
would go much deeper, removing the causes of misery and not merely relieving 
the effect. It was then, when I came to know him, that I realized I had 
found my place. The more I became acquainted with him and with his work, the 
more I felt assured that some of my old dreams and hopes might yet come 
true. Fully and accurately to describe him would be beyond my power, he so 
stood out above the run of men in deep wisdom and lofty nobility of 
character. He had made theosophy the living power in his life, and none 
could be so bitter against him as to exhaust his tolerance or his 
compassion.

It was he who first gave me glimpses of the power of thought and made me 
realize what it will do to build or ruin the destiny of a human being. And 
in doing so, he showed me how to find in theosophy solution of all the 
problems that had vexed me: how it points the way to the right treatment of 
the downtrodden and outcast of humanity, and to the real remedies for 
poverty, vice, and crime. On all these subjects the first word of theosophy 
is this: he who would enter upon the path that leads to truth must put new 
interpretations on the failings and mistakes of his fellowmen. He must come 
to understand the law of eternal justice -- karma, that "whatsoever a man 
soweth, that shall he also reap" -- and to know the necessity it implies for 
an unconquerable compassion . . .

(From The Gods Await, 2nd ed., pp. 62-6)



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