Swami Vivekananda                           

On the death of Dr. Lewis Janes.

Swami Saradananda

(Published in 1902 in Lewis Janes, A Tribute)

The news of the decease of our dear friend has come to us at last. We could hardly believe it at first. Even now all the dear days that I had the good fortune to pass with the Doctor are crowding in my memory, and I can hardly express my feelings. I had all hopes of seeing his fatherly face and meeting the warmth of his hand and heart once more; but alas! he is gone and America has lost one more charm for me. It is ever a mystery why such useful lives are cut away in their prime, when they have hardly done half the good that they would do were they allowed to remain! But none has as yet found a solution to it. All that we can do is to resign — resign ourselves to the inevitable — resign, believing there is a purpose, all good, underneath it all! But the heart bleeds all the same, and each one of such resignations is made at the cost of so much of our life-blood. . . . What words of condolence can bring light and hope in these days of sacred sorrow? — perhaps the truth that life is one, and death but a mere change, and that in death as in life we are joined with those whom we dearly love. It is easier to crumble to dust a peak of the Himalayas, or to turn a mighty river-current back to its source in the mountains, than to stop the flow of true love towards its object. Not even death can do it!