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.

Owing to these appliances the heavy work of the day was got through usually in time for a late breakfast, the plates and dishes being washed up and the knives cleaned by a mechanical process scarcely occupying two minutes; and the afternoon was usually devoted to the instruction of chelas in esoteric branches of learning, and their practical application to mundane affairs, until the cool of the evening, when parties would be made up either for playing out-of-door games, in the less violent of which the women took part, or in riding the beautiful horses of the country, or in flying swiftly over its richly cultivated and variegated surface, paying visits to other damas or homes, each of which was occupied on the same scale and in the same manner as our own.  After a late dinner, we usually had concerts, balls, and private theatricals.