Poster of Swami Vivekananda

During the Parliament of Religions, this poster of Swamiji (based on photo 21) was made by the Goes Lithographic Co., Chicago, 1893. It was posted throughout the city to draw people’s attention to the fair. Swamiji had become famous overnight and was a major attraction. This copy of the poster, which was made from one of the original posters now in the possession of the Vedanta Society, Berkeley, bears the following inscription: “To Hollister Sturges—All strength and success be yours is the constant prayer of your friend, Vivekananda” Hollister Sturges was the son of Mrs. Betty (Sturges) Leggett—the family members of whom were all dear to Swamiji’s heart. Another reference to this poster can be found in New Discoveries, volume 5:199: In Chicago Mrs. Blodgett acquired a large colored poster of him [Swamiji], which she hung in her home in Los Angeles, never dreaming that he would one day be her guest. This poster, hanging incredibly over her [Miss Josephine MacLeod’s] dying brother’s bed, had greeted Miss MacLeod when she had arrived from Ridgely Manor. Astounded, she had asked Mrs. Blodgett, “What do you know about him?” and Mrs. Blodgett had told her story. “I know him,” Miss MacLeod had said, and then, “Why don’t you ask him here?” “To my cottage?” “He will come.” And in her memoirs she relates: “In three weeks my brother was dead and in six weeks Swamiji was there.” (Later on Miss MacLeod brought this poster, which showed Swamiji standing in his robe and turban, to Ridgely Manor, where she mounted it in a toweringly high-backed Gothic chair. For years it remained thus in her bedroom. “One would hardly dare go into her room,” Mrs. Frances Leggett told me,“—this enormous thing appearing there!”) ❊ ❊ ❊ Hail, Columbia, motherland of liberty! It has been given to thee, who never dipped her hand in her neighbor’s blood, who never found out that the shortest way of becoming rich was by robbing one’s neighbors, it has been given to thee to march at the vanguard of civilization with the flag of harmony. (CW [1984] 1:20)