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Autobiography of Alice A. Bailey - Chapter V
We had a cat and a dog who were exceedingly individual. The dog was a police dog, grandson of Rin Tin Tin and most valuable. He was supposed to be a protection to us and to scare tramps and bums away but he was no protection whatsoever. He loved everybody and welcomed every bum to the house. He was overbred, far too sensitive and highly strung and had to have bromides constantly to keep his nerves in order. There was not a streak of viciousness in him and we all adored him. The cat nobody adored because it adored only me. It was a huge and quite magnificent Tom cat that we picked up as a stray when it was a wee kitten. It would speak to nobody but me. It would accept food from nobody but me. It refused to enter the house if I were not downstairs so at last Foster built it a ladder from the garden to my bedroom window and cut a hole in the screen so that he could get into my room and from that moment it was entirely happy, never using any door, but always shooting up the ladder on to my bed. The work was growing apace during these years. My husband had started the magazine, The Beacon, and it was meeting a real need as it does today. I usually put on 6 or 8 [206] public lectures a year and as long as no paid admissions were asked I could easily get out an audience of 1000. In time, however, we decided that a lot of these people who occupied chairs in my audiences were what is called in New York simply floaters. They drifted in and out of every free lecture, no matter what the subject was, and never really benefited from anything they heard. The time, therefore, came when we decided to charge admission to my lectures even if it was only 25 cents. The audiences immediately dropped about half and this pleased us greatly. Those who came did so because they wanted to hear and learn and it was worth while talking to them. I have always liked lecturing and for the last twenty years have never known what it is to feel nervous on the platform. I like people and trust them and an audience is simply a nice person. I suppose lecturing is the thing I enjoy the most in the world and today, because prevented by my health, it is one of the greatest deprivations. My doctor does not really sanction it and my husband worries dreadfully so I only lecture now at the yearly conference. It was early in this period that I established a friendship which has meant to me more than anything else in the world except my marriage to Foster Bailey. This friend was simplicity and sweetness and selflessness combined, and she brought a richness and a beauty into my life of which I had never dreamed. Seventeen long years we walked the spiritual way together. I gave her all the spare time I could and was constantly at her home. The same things amused us; the same qualities and ideas interested us. We had no secrets from each other and I knew all that she felt about people and circumstances and her environment. I like to think that in the last seventeen years of her lonely life she was not entirely alone. To understand her, to stand by her, to let her talk to me freely and to feel safe in so doing [207] was the only compensation I could make to her for her endless goodness to me. For seventeen years she dressed me and until her death in 1940 I never bought an article of clothing for myself. I'm still wearing the clothes she gave me. All the jewelry I have she gave me. I brought beautiful lace and jewelry to this country when I came but it all had to be sold to pay the grocer's bills and she saw to it that some of it was replaced. She put the girls through school and always paid our passages to Europe and Great Britain and back. We were so close that if I was ill she knew it automatically. I remember once being ill in England some years ago and within a few hours she cabled me £500 as she knew I was ill and might need it. Our telepathic relationship has been quite extraordinary and has continued even after her death. When things were happening in her own family after she had passed over she would discuss them with me telepathically. Although I had no means of knowing about them, later I would discover what it was all about and I am quite frequently even today in touch with her. She had a very deep and profound knowledge of the Ageless Wisdom but she was afraid of people; afraid of being misunderstood; afraid that people liked her for her money and basically and deeply afraid of life. I think I was of service to her along these lines, for she respected my judgment and found it often coincided with hers. I acted as a safety-valve. She knew she could tell me anything and that it would go no further. Even when she was dying she had me on her mind and only a few days before her death I had a letter from her which I could scarcely read, telling me about herself. The letter was mailed for her by someone. One of the things that I am looking forward to when I pass over to the other side is to find her waiting for me, for that she has promised to do. We had good times together whilst she was on earth. We chuckled [208] and laughed over the same things. We liked the same colors and I have often wondered what I did in the past to deserve such a friend in the present.
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