marvellously complete and well-organised system which prevailed in its
curiously composed society. Suffice it to say, that in the fairy-like
pavilion which was my home, dwelt twenty-four lovely Sisters and their
twenty-three _chelas_--I was to make the twenty-fourth--in the most
complete and absolute harmony, and that their lives presented the most
charming combination of active industry, harmless gaiety, and innocent
pleasures. By a proper distribution of work and proportionment of
labour, in which all took part, the cultivation of the land, the tending
of the exquisite gardens, with their plashing fountains, fragrant
flowers, and inviting arbours, the herding of the cattle, and the heavier
part of various handicrafts, fell upon the men; while the women looked
after the domestic arrangements--cooked, made or mended and washed the
_chelas_' clothes and their own (both men and women were dressed
according to the purest principles of aesthetic taste), looked after the
dairy, and helped the men in the lighter parts of their industries.

Various inventions, known only to the occult sisterhood by means of their
studies in the esoteric science of mechanics, contributed to shorten
these labours to an extent which would be scarcely credited by the
uninitiated; but some idea of their nature may be formed from the fact
that methods of storing and applying electricity, unknown as yet in the
West, have here been in operation for many centuries, while telephones,
flying-machines, and many other contrivances still in their infancy with
us, are carried to a high pitch of perfection. In a word, what struck me
at once as the fundamental difference between this sisterhood and the
fraternity of adepts with which I had been associated, was that the
former turned all their occult experiences to practical account in their
daily life in this world, instead of reserving them solely for the
subjective conditions which are supposed by _mahatmas_ to attach
exclusively to another state of existence.