"We believe in heaven and hell as temporary abodes of reward and punishment. When a man dies his good and evil deeds are weighed on the scales. First he goes to heaven to receive his reward, then to hell to suffer in proportion to his sins. When everything is squared up he again returns to the world in the form of another being, the same process is repeated again and again, and he can attain perfect bliss only after he has reached such a stage of development that he can do neither good nor evil deeds, but must lose himself in the contemplation of God until he finally ceases to exist as an individual being, and is reunited with God of whom he really constitutes a part." [Illustration: ABDUL, MY MOHAMMEDAN SERVANT.] Was invited to the home of Col. Gordon to see some proofs of occultation, which is very wide-spread in India, and witnessed phenomena, which were so strange, that I hesitate to write them down. I saw heavy objects moving in the air through the room above our heads, and a man with the chair on which he sat rising several feet from the floor without the aid of any visible force whatever. I heard a slate pencil, moved by an invisible power, writing on a slate, and read in plain English what was written. I also saw in the same manner a pen writing on paper with ink, and felt with my hand the moisture of the ink. I know not wherein the invisible power consisted which caused these phenomena, but that such a power does exist I know for certain, for in this case, at least, there was no chance for deception. At the home of the prince Tagore I met the renowned Madame Blavatsky, and many Hindoo theosophists. She is a large, corpulent woman, with intelligent, though rather coarse, features. She believes that she is attended by Kut-Humis-Lal-Sing, a Buddhistic hermit who is claimed to be two thousand years old, and have the power of moving his "astral body" as swiftly as thought to the most distant places. For my part I saw nothing remarkable among the theosophists, but it is a common belief among the Hindoos that certain pundits, or learned men, who for years have lived in the mountains as hermits, abstaining from food and all sensual pleasures, thereby attain such a power of mind over matter as to be able to separate the former from the body and let it, untrammeled by the laws of matter, move from place to place, still retaining the same form and ability to speak and act. Whether this is so or not I cannot say, but this I know, that "there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy." [Illustration: TYPES OF MOHAMMEDAN SERVANTS.] [Illustration: SOBULLA, AN IDIOT.]