HOW D’E DO PRESEDEN?
Protap Chunder Majumdar (1883)
Vivekananda is usually thought to be the first Indian teacher to come to the US. But one of India’s official delegates to the 1893 Parliament (overshadowed by the more charismatic Swami), Protap Chunder Majumdar, visited here in 1883 while on a two-year ‘round-the-world tour as a high-ranking missionary for a Hindu religious organization called the New Dispensation (a splinter group of the Brahmo Samaj). In September, he stopped over in Massachusetts and gave a talk to a small gathering in the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s widow, his second wife Lydia. He even met briefly with President Chester Arthur–you didn’t know we had a president named “Chester Arthur,” did you?– a visit he wrote rather humorously about in Sketches of a Tour Around the World (1884):
I had an introduction from a prominent United States Senator to the President. I therefore ascended the marble steps of [the] White House one fine afternoon after I had walked and driven a great deal in the picturesque metropolis of Washington. To my surprise I found a great many people had come on the same errand, and had been shown to a large waiting room where they talked, smoked, and made frequent use of the many spittoons. After a while we were ushered into the reception chamber. President Arthur stood at one end, and there were seats of all kinds placed around. The visitors walked up to him without any order or presentation, each one at the quickest opportunity, and by the shortest way. Those who were not obtrusive had to remain behind. I was seated not far from the space where the audience was taking place, and in spite of myself, a good deal of conversation drifted away into my hearing. An aggrieved sanitarian had the President by the buttonhole, persuading him to assent to some measure of municipal reform. …
The absence of formality, I might even say of dignity, was startling to me after my experience of red-tapism in the Old World. Men, great-coated up to their noses, and rough-shod, and hob-nailed, came forward with their muddy boots, and extending their palms growled out ‘How d’e do Preseden?’ And the great man had to courtesy, and be affable to all. ...
Vivekananda is usually thought to be the first Indian teacher to come to the US. But one of India’s official delegates to the 1893 Parliament (overshadowed by the more charismatic Swami), Protap Chunder Majumdar, visited here in 1883 while on a two-year ‘round-the-world tour as a high-ranking missionary for a Hindu religious organization called the New Dispensation (a splinter group of the Brahmo Samaj). In September, he stopped over in Massachusetts and gave a talk to a small gathering in the home of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s widow, his second wife Lydia. He even met briefly with President Chester Arthur–you didn’t know we had a president named “Chester Arthur,” did you?– a visit he wrote rather humorously about in Sketches of a Tour Around the World (1884):
I had an introduction from a prominent United States Senator to the President. I therefore ascended the marble steps of [the] White House one fine afternoon after I had walked and driven a great deal in the picturesque metropolis of Washington. To my surprise I found a great many people had come on the same errand, and had been shown to a large waiting room where they talked, smoked, and made frequent use of the many spittoons. After a while we were ushered into the reception chamber. President Arthur stood at one end, and there were seats of all kinds placed around. The visitors walked up to him without any order or presentation, each one at the quickest opportunity, and by the shortest way. Those who were not obtrusive had to remain behind. I was seated not far from the space where the audience was taking place, and in spite of myself, a good deal of conversation drifted away into my hearing. An aggrieved sanitarian had the President by the buttonhole, persuading him to assent to some measure of municipal reform. …
The absence of formality, I might even say of dignity, was startling to me after my experience of red-tapism in the Old World. Men, great-coated up to their noses, and rough-shod, and hob-nailed, came forward with their muddy boots, and extending their palms growled out ‘How d’e do Preseden?’ And the great man had to courtesy, and be affable to all. ...
