THE LIFE OF

\RY BAKER G'EDDY

AND
THE HISTORY OF

HRISTIAN SCIENCE

GEORGINE MILMINE

LIBRARY

TORONTO

Shelf No.
Register No.... J

i

THE LIFE OF
MARY BAKER G. EDDY

AND THE
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

MARY BAKER G. EDDY
From a photograph taken in Concord, N. H., in 1892

THE LIFE OF
MARY BAKER G. EDDY

AND THE
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

BY
GEORGINE MILMINE

ILLUSTRATED

YORK

DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1909

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN

COPYRIGHT, 1907, 1908, BY THE S. S. MCCLURE COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
PUBLISHED, NOVEMBER, 1909 '

NOTE

The following history was first published in serial form
in McClure's Magazine, 1907-1908. It has since been revised

and new material has been added.

G. M.

CONTENTS

I. Mrs. Eddy's American Ancestors Mark Baker, and
Life on the Bow Farm Schooldays in Til-
ton Early Influences Her First Marriage 3

II. Mrs. Glover as a Widow in Tilton Her Interest
in Mesmerism and Clairvoyance The Disposal
of Her Son Marriage to Daniel Patterson 26

III. Mrs. Patterson First Hears of Dr. Quimby

Her Arrival in Portland Quimby and His
"Science" 42

IV. Mrs. Patterson Becomes Quimby's Patient and

Pupil Her Defence of Quimby and His The
ory Her Grief at His Death She Asks Mr.
Dresser to Take up Quimby's Work . . 56

V. The Quimby Controversy Mrs. Eddy's Claim that
Christian Science Was a Divine Revelation to
Her The Story of Her Fall on the Ice in
Lynn and Her Miraculous Recovery . . 71

VI. The Quimby Controversy Continued Mrs. Eddy's
Attempts to Discredit Quimby Her Charge
that He Was Always a Mesmerist Quimby's

Adherents Defend Him 88

vii

Vlll

CONTENTS

CHAPTEB

VII. Dr. and Mrs. Patterson in Lynn Their Sep
aration Mrs. Patterson as a Professional Vis
itor She Teaches Hiram Crafts the Quimby
" Science " Mrs. Patterson in Amesbury . 105

VIII. Two Years with the Wentworths in Stoughton
Mrs. Patterson Instructs Mrs. Wentworth
from the Quimby Manuscripts and Prepares
Her First Book for the Press . . .

IX. Mrs. Glover Goes into Partnership with Richard
Kennedy Their Establishment in Lynn
Mrs. Glover's First Disciples Disagreements
and Lawsuits ....... 134

X. Mrs. Glover's Influence over Her Students
Quimby Discredited Daniel Harrison Spof-
ford Mrs. Glover's Marriage to Asa Gilbert
Eddy ........ 155

XI. The First Appearance of Science and Health
Christian Science as a System of Metaphysics
As a Religion As a Curative Agent . . 176

XII. Mrs. Eddy's Belief that She Suffered for the

Sins of Others Letters to Students The
Origin and Development of Malicious Animal
Magnetism A Revival of Witchcraft . . 211

XIII. The " Conspiracy to Murder " Case Arrest of

Eddy and Arens on a Sensational Charge
Hearing in Court Discharge of the De
fendants ..... 245

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XIV. Mrs. Eddy Addresses Boston Audiences She is
Tortured by Her Fear of Mesmerism Or
ganisation of " The Church of Christ, Scien
tist " Withdrawal of Eight Leading Mem
bers Mrs. Eddy's Retreat from Lynn

XV. The Massachusetts Metaphysical College Organ
ised Death of Asa Gilbert Eddy Mrs.
Eddy's Belief that He Was Mentally As
sassinated Entrance of Calvin A. Frye . 281

XVI. Mrs. Eddy's Boston Household A Daily War
fare Against Mesmerism The P. M. Soci
ety An Action Against Arens for In
fringement of Copyright .... 298

XVII. Literary Activities Mrs. Eddy as an Editor
The Rev. Mr. Wiggin Becomes Her Liter
ary Assistant His Private Estimate of
Mrs. Eddy and Christian Science . . 312

XVIII. The Material Prosperity of Church and College
Mrs. Eddy Goes to Live in Commonwealth
Avenue Discontent of the Students A
Rival School of Mental Healing The
Schism of 1888 .... 340

XIX. Mrs. Eddy Rallies Her Forces Growth of
Christian Science in the West The Mak
ing of a Healer The Apotheosis of Mrs.
Eddy

x CONTENTS

CHAPTER

XX. The Adoption of a Son Mrs. Eddy's House
hold and the New Favourite A Crisis in
Christian Science Mrs. Eddy is Driven
from Boston by " M.A.M." .... 379

XXI. The New Policy Mrs. Eddy Resigns from
Pulpit and Journal and Closes Her College
Disorganisation of the Church and Asso
ciation Reconstruction on a New Basis
Mrs. Eddy in Absolute Control and Posses
sion 391

XXII. Life at Pleasant View Mrs. Eddy Produces
More Christian Science Literature Fos
ter Eddy Is Made Publisher of the Text-
Book The Story of His Fall from Favour
Rule of Service . . . . . 411

XXIII. Josephine Curtis Woodbury and the Romantic
School Birth of the Prince of Peace Mrs.
Eddy Withdraws Her Support " War in
Heaven" 428

XXIV. Mrs. Eddy Adopts the Title of Mother "
Beginning of the Concord Pilgrimages
Mrs. Eddy Hints at Her Political Influence
The Building of the Mother Church Ex
tension ........ 441

XXV. George Washington Glover Mrs. Eddy's Son
Brings an Action Against Leading Christian
Scientists Withdrawal of the Suit Mrs.
Eddy Moves from Concord, N, H., to New
ton, Mass 453

CONTENTS yi

CHAPTER PAOH

XXVI. Training the Vine How Mrs. Eddy Has Organ
ised Her Church Her Management and
Discipline The Church Manual Recent
Modifications in Christian Science Practice
Membership of the Church Practical
Results of Mrs. Eddy's Life-Work . . 460

Appendix A 486

Appendix B ......... 489

Appendix C . . . . ... ..... 494

ILLUSTRATIONS

Mary Baker G. Eddy. From a photograph taken in

Concord, N. H., in 1892 .... Frontispiece

FACING
PAGE

Mark Baker, Mrs. Eddy's father 10

Daniel Patterson, Mrs. Eddy's second husband . . 34
The house in North Groton, N. H., where Mrs. Eddy,

then Mrs. Daniel Patterson, lived for seven years . 38

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby 48

Mary Baker G. Eddy. From a tintype given to Mrs.

Sarah G. Crosby in 1864 62

Facsimile of the second sheet of the first " spirit " letter
from Albert Baker, Mrs. Eddy's brother, to Mrs.

Sarah Crosby 66

Mary Baker G. Eddy. From a photograph taken in

Amesbury, Mass., in 1870 114

Mary Baker G. Eddy. Helping an Amesbury photogra
pher to get a successful picture of a baby . .114
Title page and part of the first page of the manuscript
from which Mrs. Glover taught Mrs. Wentworth
the system of mental healing which she ascribed to

P. P. Quimby 128

Richard Kennedy. From a photograph taken in Lynn,

Mass., in 1871 152

Asa Gilbert Eddy, Mrs. Eddy's third husband . . .168

Daniel H. Spofford 252

Edward J. Arens 252

xiii

xiv ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

Mary Baker G. Eddy. From a tintype given to Lucy

Wentworth in Stoughton, Mass., in 1870 . . 270
Mary Baker G. Eddy. From a photograph taken in

Boston in the early eighties 270

Calvin A. Frye. From a photograph taken about 1882 294
Mary Baker G. Eddy. Taken about the year 1886,

while at the head of her college in Boston . . 308
Mary Baker G. Eddy. As she looked in 1870 when she

first taught Christian Science in Lynn, Mass. . 308
The Reverend James Henry Wiggin, who was for four

years Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser . . . 328
Christian Scientists' Picnic at Point of Pines, July 16,

1885 348

Ebenezer J. Foster Eddy, the adopted son of Mrs. Eddy 384
George Washington Glover, Mrs. Eddy's only child . . 384
Pleasant View, Mrs. Eddy's home in Concord, N. H. . 414
The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston. The

Mother Church 450

THE LIFE OF
MARY BAKER G. EDDY

AND THE
HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

THE LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND
THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE

CHAPTER I

MES. EDDY'S AMERICAN ANCESTORS MARK BAKER, AND LIFE ON
THE BOW FARM SCHOOLDAYS IN TILTON EARLY INFLU
ENCES HER FIRST MARRIAGE

MARY A. MORSE BAKER, 1 the future leader of the
Christian Science Church, was the sixth and youngest
child of Mark and Abigail Baker. She was born July 16, 1821,
at the Baker homestead in the township of Bow, near the present
city of Concord in New Hampshire. As a family the Bakers were
of the rugged farmer type of the period to which they belonged.
From the days of John Baker, their earliest American ancestor,
who came from East Anglia and obtained a freehold in Charles-
town, Mass., in 1634, throughout five generations 2 to Mark
Baker, they had worked the unwilling soil of their New England
farms, and brought up large families to labour after them.
One of their number had engaged in the pre-Revolutionary
wars, and in 1758 received a captain's commission from
Governor Benning Wentworth of New Hampshire. This was

1 Mrs. Eddy was named iu part for her grandmother, Mary Ann Moore (or
O'Moor) Baker. She wrote her name as above, using only the initial of her
second name.

2 The five generations were (1) John, (2) Thomas, (3) Thomas, (4) Joseph,
(5) Joseph, who was the father of Mark Baker and the grandfather of Mrs.
Eddy.

3

4 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Joseph Baker, the grandfather of Mark who married Hannah,
the daughter of Captain John Lovewell, hero of " LovelPs
Fight," and through her came into possession of the homestead
in Bow. According to family tradition this farm, which was
given to Hannah Lovewell by her father, was originally a part
of " Lovell's Grant," a tract deeded to Captain Lovewell by
the government for " gallant military service."

As far back as the memory of any of the present generation
of Bakers goes, however, the farm was first occupied by Joseph
Baker 2d, and his wife, whose name is recorded by the Baker
family both as Mary Ann O'Moor and Marion Moore. 3 Of
their large family of children, Mark, born May 2, 1785, was
the youngest, 4 and at the death of his father in 1816, he, with
an elder brother, James, inherited the farm. Mark's share
of the estate, included the farmhouse and barns, with the obliga
tion to support his mother. The farm was hill land, rising
from the valley of the Merrimac River, and not especially
fertile, but as his fathers before him had done, he managed,
by toiling early and late, to wring from it a living for himself
and his large family. In May, 1807, he had married the
daughter of Nathaniel and Phebe Ambrose, neighbours across
the Merrimac, in Pembroke, and brought her home to his
father's house. Like the Bakers, the Ambrose family were
severe Congregationalists, and farmers of the familiar New
England type. Deacon Ambrose and his wife were staunch

Mrs. Eddy and at least one other descendant gives the name as Marlon
Moore, but from statistics copied from the family Bible of this Joseph Baker,
and now in possession of his great grand-daughter, it is recorded that Joseph
Baker was born November 9, 1741. and died in February, 1816. It gives the
ame of his wife as Mary Ann O'MoT, who was born December 11, 1743
and died January 26, 1835, and names ten children born to them See
Appendix A.

4 JL ne T Joseph S? ker recor <i names ten children, as follows : John, James,
David, Jesse, William, Hannah, Joseph, Mary Ann, Philip, and Mark.

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 5

supporters of their church, and they had brought up their
daughter, Abigail, to be both pious and thrifty. As the wife
of Mark Baker she is remembered for her patience and industry.
She devoted all her energies to the care of her family, and was
faithful in attendance at church. And this simple record, like
that of many another heroic New England housewife, is all
that is known of Mrs. Eddy's mother.

The dominating influence in the Baker home was Mark, and
he made his presence felt in the community as well. His char
acter was naturally strong, and as narrow as his experience
and opportunity had been. Born ten years after the American
Revolution, he grew up in the atmosphere of sharply-defined
opinions and declared principles, peculiar to the times. The
country was still comparatively undeveloped and scantily popu
lated, and without the broadening influences made possible by
later inventions. His house, in the middle of an isolated farm,
was remote from its neighbours ; the nearest town was Concord,
then a place of two or three thousand inhabitants, and where,
except on market days and church days, he almost never went.
The hard daily labour of the farm, and the equally hard work
which he made of his politics and religion, comprised all his
interests. To conquer the resisting land, to drive a good bar
gain, to order his conduct within the letter of his church law,
to hate his enemies and to hold in contempt all who disagreed
with him these were the rules by which he shaped his life.
High-tempered, dominating, and narrow, he was not content
merely to adhere to his own principles, letting other men live
as they would, but sought to impress his convictions upon his
neighbours. There are instances of life-long quarrels between

6 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Mark Baker and those who differed from him in business, poli
tics, and religion. A quarrel over a question of business with
his brother James resulted in a complete separation of the
two families (although they lived as neighbours for years)
from 1816 almost to the present time. 5 A charge which he
brought against a church brother was arbitrated for several
years before church committees ; and his local political quarrels
during abolition days were frequent and bitter. He lived on
the Bow farm from 1785 to 1836, and in Sanbornton Bridge
(now Tilton) from 1836 until his death in 1865, and to those
who knew him in these two communities he is still a vivid memory.
In appearance he was tall and lean, his muscles hardened by
labour. His iron jaw and tense gray eye bespoke determina
tion and resistance. The very tap of his stick, as he tramped
along the country roads, conveyed a challenge. His voice
was terrific in power and volume. The Baker voice is a tradi
tion in New Hampshire, and stories are told in Bow of the
Baker brothers at work in distant fields upon their farms,
thundering like gods to each other across the hills.

Mark's neighbours called him " Squire " Baker, and the
younger folk called him " Uncle." They found him sharp at
a bargain, but honest in his dealings, and while he paid his
workers the smallest wages, he always sacredly kept his word,
and in his narrow way he was a good citizen. He tried his
friends by his fierce temper and his intense prejudices, which
kept him, in one way and another, in a continual ferment. " A

'Only a few years ago Mrs. Eddy renewed this family connection by
sending for Representative Henry Moore Baker of Concord, a grandson of
Tames Baker, to call upon her at Pleasant View, her home in the same city.
Mr. Baker was, until October, 1909, one of the three trustees appointed by
Mrs. Eddy in 1907 to take charge of her property interests.

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 7

tiger for temper, and always in a row." " You could no more
move him than you can move old Kearsarge " (a local moun
tain). "An ugly disposition, but faithful to his church, and
immovable in his politics." These are the comments of his
old neighbours in Tilton to-day.

Inevitably, he carried his religion and politics to extremes.
In the Congregational church he was an active figure, faithful
and punctilious in performing all its requirements. Not only
did he fulfil his own church obligations, but he saw that his
brethren and sisters fulfilled theirs. He brought charges of
backsliding against fellow-members when they failed to attend
public worship or communion, and was willingly appointed to
visit and " labour " with the delinquents. It seems probable
that Mark enjoyed this duty and performed it thoroughly.
He had his own church troubles, too. The yellowed books of
the Tilton Congregational Church record many a disputation
between him and the brethren. A quarrel between Mark Baker
and William Hayes was aired before the congregation year
after year, but the two were never reconciled. The church
did not follow Mark's wishes in the settlement of the differences,
and after bringing up the old charges again and again, and
receiving no satisfaction, he applied for a letter of dismissal,
because he " could not walk in covenant with this church."
When his request was refused, he placed himself on record as
" feeling aggrieved at the doings of the church on this subject."

A story which has passed into neighbourhood tradition illu
minates the man and shows the strength and quality of his
religious feeling. One Sunday in his later years he mistook
the day and worked as usual about his place. On Monday

8 LIFE OP MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

morning he started for church, but was disturbed at seeing
his neighbours at work. As usual he took them to task. " Sis
ter Lang," he said, frowning at a neighbour who was placing
out her tubs for washing, " what is the meaning of this on the
Lord's Day? " The woman replied that as the day was Monday
she was preparing to do the family washing, but Mark com
manded her to prepare for church instead, and went on his way.
Farther along he stopped again. " Brother Davis," he cried,
" what is this commotion in the streets ? Why are not the
church bells ringing for public worship ? " He was again
assured that it was Monday; but he was not convinced until
he arrived at the church and found the doors closed. He
hurried to Elder Curtice, who confirmed his fears. " Is it
possible that I have broken the Lord's Day? " exclaimed Uncle
Baker in alarm, and he knelt with his pastor and prayed for
forgiveness. Back to his home went the old man, the godly
part of him purged. But the old Adam remained, and as he
strode up the hill he trembled with excitement. A tame crow,
a pet of the children of the neighbourhood, hopped on a bush
in front of him, cawing loudly. In his perturbed condition,
the sight of the bird made Mark angrier than ever, and raising
his stick, he struck the crow dead. " Take that," he said in
a passion, " for hoppin' about on the Sabbath," and he stormed
on up the hill. At home he kept the day strictly as Sunday to
atone for his worldliness of the previous day.

In politics he was no less intense. He was a pro-slavery
advocate before the war, and an unbending Copperhead during
it. He hated Abraham Lincoln above all men. Two luckless
young women, selling pictures of Lincoln, once entered his

HISTORY OP CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 9

house to induce him to buy, but saved themselves from ejection
only by a hasty flight. " I'll never forget what he said about
Lincoln," said one of his old neighbours now living. " When
the news of Lincoln's assassination reached Sanbornton Bridge,
I stopped at Mark Baker's to tell him of it. ' What ! ' he cried,
and throwing down his hoe, he shouted at the top of his voice,
'I'm glad on't!'"

When his politics and religion clashed as they did during the
Civil War, the old man was sorely torn. His pastor, Elder Cor-
ban Curtice, was a Republican who believed in the righteousness
of the war, and Mark, with others of a different political faith,
attempted to have the minister removed for " political preach
ing." Failing in this, some of the oldest members left the
church. But Mark Baker remained. He went to church as
regularly as ever, and abided by all its rulings as before, but
his protest was expressed in a manner altogether characteristic.
He sat doggedly through the sermon, his eyes fixed on the
elder. The moment the word " rebellion " left the preacher's
lips whether he referred to the rebellion of the States or
the rebellion of the angels Mark Baker sprang to his feet,
and, with flashing eyes and clenched fists, strode indignantly
out of the church.

These incidents show the calibre of the man who was Mrs.
Eddy's father. There is no doubt that he possessed qualities
out of the ordinary. With his natural force and strong con
victions, and with his rectitude of character, he might have
been more than a local figure, but for the insurmountable
obstacles of a childishly passionate temper and a deep per
versity of mind. He was without imagination and without

10 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

sympathy. From fighting for a principle he invariably passed
to fighting for his own way, and he was unable to see that the
one cause was not as righteous as the other. His portrait-
a daguerreotype shows hardness and endurance and immova
bility. There is no humility in the heavy lip and square-set
mouth, no aspiration in the shrewd eyes; the high forehead
is merely forbidding. 5 3

All Mark Baker's children were born in the little farmhouse
in Bow, between 1808 and 1821. There were three sons-
Samuel, Albert, and George Sullivan and three daughters-
Abigail, Martha, and Mary. 6 The family also included Mark
Baker's mother. According to pioneer custom the early Bakers
had built their house on top of the hill upon which their farm
lay, fully half a mile from the public road, which at that point
follows the course of the Merrimac River in the valley. However
inconvenient and impractical this choice of a site may have been,
it left nothing to be desired in the view. Across the green
valley of woods and fields, through which flows the white-banked
river, one can see from the Baker hill-top the long blue ranges
of the White Mountains. Nearer at hand there are glimpses
of clean white villages, and at the left is the city of Concord.
The nearest house is out of sight at the foot of the hill. In
Mark Baker's day it was occupied by his brother James, with
whom Mark was not in friendly relation.

The house itself is of wood, unpainted, and extremely small

51 - 2 In his last years he was afflicted with a palsy of the head and hands, and
suffered from facial cancer although it did not cause his death. Of his family,
nearly all have died of cancer in some form. His two eldest daughters and
their three children, and two of his sons, Samuel and George, all died of the
dread disease.

Samuel Dow, born July 8, 1808 ; Albert, born February 5, 1810 ; George
Sullivan, born August 7, 1812; Abigail Barnard, born January 15, 1816;
Martha Smith, born January 19, 1819; Mary A. Morse, born July 16, 1821.

Frcm a tintype. Courtesy of Mrs. H. S. Philbrook

MARK BAKER
Mrs. Eddy'3 father

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 11

and plain. A narrow door in the centre opens directly upon
the stairway. On the left hand is a little parlour, lighted by
two small-paned windows, and containing a corner fireplace. A
larger room at the right, used as a granary by the present
owner, was once the kitchen and living-room. Overhead there
were three or four small sleeping-rooms. One wonders where
the family of nine bestowed themselves when they were all in
the house at once. The house has not been occupied for many
years. The windows are boarded up, and it is desolate and
forsaken. Yet it is not forgotten, for every summer Christian
Scientists come to visit the spot where their leader was born.
It is a shrine to the devout, who carry away stones and handf uls
of soil and little shrubs, as souvenirs.

The Baker children were brought up like other farmers' fami
lies of that time and place. The older ones worked about the
farm and in the house, and in the winter when farm work was
" slack " they attended the district school. Lonely and unstimu-
lating enough the life seems from this distance, but as a matter
of fact it was useful and not uninteresting. It was before the
days of steam railroads and the thousand modern aids to living,
when every farmer's family was an industrial community in
itself. All the supplies of the household, as well as food and
clothes, were produced at home. Each man and woman and girl
and boy of the farms was a craftsman, their daily work re
quiring physical strength and mental ingenuity and a kind of
moral heroism. The school supplied their intellectual interests,
the church satisfied their religious emotions, and for social
diversion there were corn-huskings and barn-raisings and quilt-
ing-bees. The rest was hard labour.

12 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

The qualities of Mark Baker were transmitted to his children.
They were all high-tempered and headstrong and self-assertive,
and they did not lack confidence in themselves in any particular.
At home, however, they were trained to obedience and up to
the time at least of the birth of his youngest daughter, Mark
Baker was master in his own house. But from the beginning
it was evident that special concessions must be made to Mary.
She was named for her grandmother, who made a pet of her
from the first, and no doubt helped to spoil her as a baby.
Mrs. Baker, the mother, often told her friends that Mary,
of all her children, was the most difficult to care for, and they
were all at their wits' ends to know how to keep her quiet and
amused. As Mary grew older she was sent to district school
with her sisters, but only for a few days at a time, for she was
subject from infancy to convulsive attacks of a hysterical nature.
Because of this affliction she was at last allowed to omit school
altogether and to throw off all restraint at home. The family
rules were relaxed where she was concerned, and the chief prob
lem in the Baker house was how to pacify Mary and avoid her
nervous " fits." Even Mark Baker, heretofore invincible, was
obliged to give way before the dominance of his infant daughter.
His time-honoured observance of the Sabbath, which was a fixed
institution at the Baker farm, was abandoned because Mary
could not, after a long morning in church, sit still all day in
the house with folded hands, listening to th? reading of the
Bible. Sundays became a day of torture not only to the hys
terical child, but to all the family, for she invariably had one
of her bad attacks, and the day ended in excitement and anxiety.
These evidences of an abnormal condition of the nerves are im-

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 13

portant to any study of Mrs. Eddy and her career. As child
and woman she suffered from this condition, and its existence
explains some phases of her nature and certain of her acts,
which otherwise might be difficult to understand and impossible
to estimate.

Until Mary's fifteenth year the routine of life at the farm
was unbroken except for the departure from home of her two
eldest brothers to start life for themselves, and the death of
her grandmother Baker. In choosing their occupations, Mark
Baker's sons turned away from the farm, new opportunities
having been opened by the expanding industrial and commercial
life of the country. Samuel, the eldest, went to Boston, in
company with a neighbour's son, George Washington Glover,
to learn the trade of a stone mason, as the quarries of New
Hampshire had then been recently opened. Albert, the second
son, had a higher ambition. He prepared himself for college
and entered Dartmouth. He was graduated in 1834, and
immediately went to Hillsborough Center, N. H., to study law
in the office of Franklin Pierce, afterward President of the
United States. Under the influence of Pierce young Baker
entered politics. He served one term as Assemblyman in the
State Legislature, and received the nomination for Representa
tive in Congress; but he died in 1841 before the election. He
was then only thirty-one years old, and his character and
ability seemed to justify the high opinion of his friends, who
regarded him as a coming man.

The death of the elder Mrs. Baker occurred in January, 1835,
and early the following year Mark Baker sold the homestead
and moved his family to a farm near the village of Sanbornton

14 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Bridge (now called Tilton), eighteen miles north of Concord.
Sanbornton Bridge was, in 1836, growing into a lively manu
facturing village. It already contained public-spirited citizens,
and had considerable social life. Altogether it afforded larger
opportunities than the Bow farm ; and here the interests of the
Baker family now centred. Abigail, the eldest daughter, soon
married Alexander Hamilton Tilton, 7 the rich man of the
village, and settled there. Her husband owndd the woollen
mill, and accumulated a considerable fortune from the manu
facture of the " Tilton tweed," which he put on the market.
Mrs. Tilton was extremely handsome and dignified, and her
strong character, in which the Baker traits were tempered
by a kindliness of spirit and a keen sense of responsibility,
made her a leading figure in that little community. She was
also capable and adaptable. When her husband died she took
charge of his business, and was even more successful in its
management than he had been. George Sullivan Baker formed
a partnership with his brother-in-law. Martha, the second
daughter, married Luther C. Pillsbury, deputy warden of the
New Hampshire penitentiary in Concord, but after the death
of her husband she returned to live in Sanbornton Bridge.
Here, too, Mark Baker and his wife lived out their days, and
here Mary Baker passed her girlhood, married, returned as a
widow, married again, and once more returned as a deserted wife.
As soon as they were settled on the new farm, Mary was
sent to the district school at the Bridge. The schoolhouse
stood on the site of the present Tilton Seminary. It was a

7 At the request of Charles Tilton, who gave the village a town hall, San
bornton Bridge was renamed Tilton in 1869. Charles Tilton was a nephew of
Alexander Hamilton Tilton.

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 15

two-story wooden building, painted red. The district school
occupied the lower floor, while the upper room was used for
a small private school, where the higher English branches were
taught. After a time these upper classes came to be known
as the " academy," and it was here that Dyer H. Sanborn, the
author of Sanborn's Grammar, taught for five years at a later
date. Mary was then nearing her fifteenth birthday, and as
she had received almost no instruction at Bow, the family hoped
that another attempt at school might be more successful.

It is one proof of Mary's remarkable personality that her old
associates remember her, even as a child, so clearly. The Baker
family was not one to be readily forgotten in any community,
and Mary had all the Baker characteristics, besides a few im
pressive ones on her own account. The writer has talked with
scores of Mary Baker's contemporaries in the New Hampshire
villages where she lived, and in their descriptions of her, their
recollections of her conduct, and their estimates of her character,
there is a remarkable consistency. Allowance must always be
made, in dealing with the early life of a famous person, for
the dishonour of a prophet in his own country. Such allow
ance has been made here, and nothing is set down which is not
supported by the testimony of many witnesses among her
neighbours and relatives and associates.

When Mary attended the district school in Tilton, she is
remembered as a pretty and graceful girl, delicately formed,
and with extremely small hands and feet. Her face was too
long and her forehead too high to answer the requirements of
perfect beauty, but her complexion was clear and of a delicate
colour, and her waving brown hair was abundant and always

16 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

becomingly arranged. Her eyes were large and gray, and
when overcharged with expression, as was often the case, they
deepened in colour until they seemed to be black. She was
always daintily dressed, and even at fifteen succeeded in keeping
closer to the fashions than was common in the community or
in her own home. But in spite of these advantages Mary was
not altogether attractive. Her manners and speech were marred
by a peculiar affectation. Her unusual nervous organisation
may have accounted for her self-consciousness and her sus
ceptibility to the presence of others, but whatever the cause,
Mary always seemed to be " showing off " for the benefit of those
about her, and her extremely languishing manners were un
kindly commented upon even at a time when languishing man
ners were fashionable. In speaking she used many words, the
longer and more unusual the better, and her pronunciation and
application of them were original.

Sarah Jane Bodwell, a daughter of the Congregational min
ister at Sanbornton Square, " kept " the school then, and find
ing Mary very backward in her studies in spite of her age
and precociousness, she placed her in a class with small children.
Mary seemed indifferent about getting into a more advanced
class and did not apply herself. Her old schoolmates say that
she was indolent and spent her time lolling in her seat or
scribbling on her slate, and apparently was incapable of con
centrated or continuous thought.

" I remember Mary Baker very well," said one of her class
mates now living in Tilton. " She began to come to district
school in the early summer of 1836. I recollect her very dis
tinctly because she sat just in front of me, and because she

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 17

was such a big girl to be in our class. I was only nine, but
I helped her with her arithmetic when she needed help. We
studied Smith's Grammar and ciphered by ourselves in Adams's
New Arithmetic, and when she left school in three or four weeks
we had both reached long division. She left on account of
sickness.

" I remember what a pretty girl she was, and how nicely
she wore her hair. She usually let it hang in ringlets, but one
day she appeared at school with her hair ' done up ' like a
young lady. She told us that style of doing it was called a
' French Twist,' a new fashion which we had never seen before.
In spite of her backwardness at books she assumed a very
superior air, and by her sentimental posturing she managed
to attract the attention of the whole school. She loved to
impress us with fine stories about herself and her family. The
schoolgirls did not like her, and they made fun of her as school
girls will. I knew her for a long time afterward, as we grew
up in the same village, but I can't say that Mary changed much
with her years."

Mrs. Eddy's own story of her early education should also
be considered. In her autobiography, Retrospection and In
trospection, she says that she was kept out of school much of
the time because her father " was taught to believe " that her
brain was too large for her body; that her brother Albert
taught her Greek, Latin, and Hebrew ; and her favourite child
hood studies were Natural Philosophy, Logic, and Moral Sci
ence. From childhood, too, Mrs. Eddy recalls, she was a
verse-maker, and " at ten years of age I was as familiar with
Lindley Murray's Grammar as with the Westminster Catechism ;

18 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

and the latter I had to repeat every Sunday." Mrs. Eddy
has also said that she " graduated from Dyer H. Sanborn's
Academy at Tilton." But at present she makes no pretension
to such scholarly attainments. " After my discovery of Chris
tian Science," she says, " most of the knowledge I had gleaned
from schoolbooks vanished like a dream." Only Lindley Murray
remained, and he in an apotheosized state. "Learning was so
illumined," she writes, " that grammar was eclipsed. Etymology
was divine history, voicing the idea of God in man's origin and
signification. Syntax was spiritual order and unity. Prosody,
the song of angels, and no earthly or inglorious theme."

Mrs. Eddy's schoolmates are not able to reconcile her story
with their own recollections. They declare frankly that they
do not believe Albert Baker taught her Hebrew, Greek, and
Latin. He entered college when Mary was nine, and left home
when she was thirteen. There were, they say, no graduations
from Dyer H. Sanborn's Academy, for the girls and boys left
school when they were old enough to go to work or to marry.
They insist that Mary's education was finished when she reached
long division in the district school.

At church, too, Mary made a vivid impression. Like the
rest of Mark Baker's family, she attended service regularly;
and she took pains with her costume, and the timing of her
arrival, so that members of the congregation have retained a
distinct picture of Mary Baker as she appeared at church.
She always made a ceremonious entrance, coming up the aisle
after the rest of the congregation were seated, and attracting
the general attention by her pretty clothes and ostentatious
manner. No trace of early piety can be found in a first-hand

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 19

study of Mrs. Eddy's life, yet in her autobiography she con
stantly refers to deep religious experiences of her childhood.
As her chief recollection of Bow farm days, she relates a
peculiar experience, intended to show that, like little Samuel,
she received ghostly visitations in early youth. She writes :

For some twelve months, when I was about eight years old, I repeatedly
heard a voice, calling me distinctly by name, three times, in an ascending
scale. I thought this was my mother's voice, and sometimes went to her,
beseeching her to tell me what she wanted. Her answer was always:
"Nothing, child! What do you mean?" Then I would say: "Mother,
who did call me? I heard somebody call Mary, three times!" This con
tinued until I grew discouraged, and my mother was perplexed and
anxious.

At another time her cousin, Mehitable Huntoon, heard the
voice and told Mary's mother about it. " That night," con
tinues Mrs. Eddy's narrative, " before going to rest, my mother
read to me the Scriptural narrative of little Samuel, and bade
me, when the voice called again, to reply as he did, ' Speak,
Lord; for thy servant heareth.' The voice came; but I did
not answer. Afterward I wept, and prayed that God would
forgive me, resolving to do, next time, as my mother had
bidden me. When the call came again I did answer, in the
words of Samuel, but never again to the material senses was
that mysterious call repeated."

Mrs. Eddy tells the story of her admission to church member
ship and of her discussions with the elders, and Christian
Scientists draw a parallel between this incident and that of
Christ debating at the age of twelve with the wise men in the
temple. " At the age of twelve," writes Mrs. Eddy, " I was
admitted to the Congregationalist (Trinitarian) Church." She
describes her horror of the doctrine of predestination, while she

20 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

was preparing to enter the church, and how she wept over the
necessity of believing that her unregenerate sisters and brothers
would be damned. Peace, however, followed a season of prayer,
and when she finally appeared at church for examination on
doctrinal points, she flatly refused to accept that of predes
tination. She says:

Distinctly do I recall what followed. I stoutly maintained that I was
willing to trust God, and take my chance of spirituaj safety with my
brothers and sisters, not one of whom had then made any profession
of religion, even if my credal doubts left me outside the doors. . . .
Nevertheless, he (the minister) persisted in the assertion that I had been
truly regenerated, and asked me to say how I felt when the new light
dawned within me. I replied that I could only answer him in the words
of the Psalmist : " Search me, O God, and know my heart ; try me, and
know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead
me in the way everlasting."

This was so earnestly said, that even the oldest church-members wept.
After the meeting was over they came and kissed me. To the astonish
ment of many, the good clergyman's heart also melted, and he received
me into their communion, and my protest along with me.

The official record bearing on this point, taken from the
clerk's book of the Tilton Congregational Church, is as follows :

1838, July 26, Received into this church, Stephen Grant, Esq., John
Gilly and his wife Hannah, Mrs. Susan French, wife of William French,
Miss Mary A. M. Baker, by profession, the two former receiving the
ordinance of baptism. Greenaugh McQuestion, Scribe.

As Mary Baker was born on July 16, 1821, and as this
record is dated " 1838, July 26," she was evidently seventeen,
and not twelve, when the event described above took place.

At home Mary was still allowed to have her own way as
completely as in her baby days. Indeed, by this time she, as
well as her family, had come to consider this privilege a
natural right, and she grew constantly more insistent in her
demands upon her parents and brother and sisters, who had

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 21

found by long experience that the only way to live at all with
Mary was to give in to all her whims. In a household where
personal labour was exacted from each member, Mary spent
her days in idleness. Where her sisters dressed plainly, she
went clad in fine and dainty raiment, and where implicit obedi
ence was required of the others, Mary ignored, and more often
opposed, the wishes of her father ; and in the clashes between
them, her mother and sisters usually at least in her younger
years ranged themselves on her side, and against her father.
Mary's hysteria was, of course, her most effective argument
in securing her way. Like the sword of Damocles, it hung
perilously over the household, which constantly surrendered and
conceded and made shift with Mary to avert the inevitable
climax. Confusion and excitement and agony of mind lest
Mary should die was the invariable consequence of her hysterical
outbreaks, and the business of the house and farm was at a
standstill until the tragedy had passed.

These attacks, which continued until very late in Mrs. Eddy's
life, have been described to the writer by many eye-witnesses,
some of whom have watched by her bedside and treated her
in Christian Science for her affliction. At times the attack
resembled convulsions. Mary fell headlong to the floor, writh
ing and screaming in apparent agony. Again she dropped as
if lifeless, and lay limp and motionless, until restored. At
other times she became rigid like a cataleptic, and continued
for a time in a state of suspended animation. At home the
family worked over her, and the doctor was sent for, and Mary
invariably recovered rapidly after a few hours; but year after
year her relatives fully expected that she would die in one

22 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

of these spasms. Nothing had the power of exciting Mark
Baker like one of Mary's " fits," as they were called. His
neighbours in Tilton remember him as he went to fetch Dr.
Ladd, 8 how he lashed his horses down the hill, standing upright
in his wagon and shouting in his tremendous voice, " Mary
is dying ! "

Outside the family, Mary's spells did not inspire the same
anxiety. The unsympathetic called them " tantrums," after a
better acquaintance with her, and declared that she used her
nerves to get her own way. In later years Mark Baker came
to share this neighbourhood opinion, and on one occasion, after
Mary had grown to womanhood, he tested her power of self-
control by allowing her to remain on the floor, where she had
thrown herself when her will was crossed, and leaving her to
herself. An hour later when he opened the door, the room
was deserted. Mary had gone upstairs to her room, and noth
ing was heard from her until she appeared at supper, fully
recovered. After that Mary's nerves lost their power over
her father to a great extent, and when hard put to it, he
sometimes complained to his friends. A neighbour, passing
the house one morning, stopped at Mark's gate and inquired
why Mary, who was at that moment rushing wildly up and
down the second-story piazza, was so excited; to which Mark
replied bitterly : " The Bible says Mary Magdalen had seven
devils, but our Mary has got ten ! "

Unquestionably, Mary's attacks represented, to a great de
gree, a genuine affliction. Although Dr. Ladd sometimes impa
tiently diagnosed them as " hysteria mingled with bad temper,"

8 Dr. Nathaniel G. Ladd, the village physician.

HISTORY OP CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 23

he was, without doubt, deeply interested in her case. He
dabbled a little in mesmerism and sometimes experimented on
Mary, whom he found a sensitive subject. He discovered that he
could partly control her movements by mental suggestion. " I
can make that girl stop in the street any time merely by willing
it," he used to tell his friends, and he often demonstrated that
he could do it.

Mesmerism was a new subject in New England in those days,
and there was much experimenting and excitement over it.
There is no doubt that it formed one of the early influences
in Mrs. Eddy's life, and that it left an indelible impression
upon her supersensitive organisation. Charles Poyen, a French
disciple of Mesmer, had travelled through New England, lectur
ing and performing marvels of mesmeric power in the same
towns in which Mrs. Eddy then lived. In his book, Animal
Magnetism in New England, which was published in 1837,
he gives an account of his experiences there and says : " Animal
magnetism indisputably constituted in several parts of New
England the most stirring topic of conversation among all
classes of society." He called it a "great Truth," "The
Power of Mind Over Matter," a " demonstration," a " discovery
given by God," and a " science." Whether or not Mary Baker
saw or heard Poyen, or read his book, she must have heard
of his theories, and must have been familiar with the phrases
he used, as they were matter of common household discussion
and would appeal strongly to a girl of Mary's temperament.
In Christian Science she has given an important place to
" Animal Magnetism," and there is a chapter devoted to it
in her book, Science and Health.

U LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Andrew Jackson Davis, 9 afterward the celebrated Spiritual
ist, had already begun to astound the public by his remarkable
theories of the universe and disease, and by his extraordinary
literary feats. The healing of disease by means outside regu
lar channels was commonly reported, and new religious ideas
were developing. It was a more prolific period than usual for
all sorts of mystery and quackery in New England.

Another influence of these early years, whiqh had an effect
upon her later career, may be traced to the sect known as
Shakers, which had sprung up in that section of New Hamp
shire. Their main community was at East Canterbury, N. H.,
five miles from Tilton, and Mary Baker was familiar with their
appearance, their peculiar costume, and their community life.
She knew their religious doctrines and spiritual exaltations, and
was acquainted with their habits of industry and thrift. In
her girlhood there were still living in the neighbourhood people
who remembered Ann Lee, 10 the founder of the sect. All
through Mary's youth the Shakers were much in the courts
because of the scandalous charges brought against them, and
on one occasion they were defended by Franklin Pierce, in whose
office Albert Baker studied law. Laws directed against their
community were constantly presented to the Legislature, and
complaints against them were frequently heard. A famous
" exposure " of Shaker methods, written by Mary Dyer, who
had been a member of the Canterbury community, was published
in Concord in 1847 ; and the Shakers and their doings formed
one of the exciting topics of the times.

io^ th - or ot . The <% eat Harmonia, etc. See Appendix B.

Fleeing from England in 1774, Ann Lee spent her first few years in
America at Concord and the neighbouring towns.

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 25

That these happenings made a profound impression on Mary
Baker and became irrevocably a part of her susceptible nature
is evident; for we find her reverting to and making use of
certain phases of Shakerism when, later, she had established
a religious system of her own. 11

When Mary was twenty-two years old she married George
Washington Glover, a son of John and Nancy Glover, who
were neighbours of the Bakers at Bow. " Wash " Glover, as
he was called, was a big, kind-hearted young fellow, who had
learned the mason's trade with Mary's brother, Samuel, and
he was an expert workman. The families were already con
nected through the marriage of Samuel Baker to Glover's
sister, Eliza. After learning his trade, Glover had gone South,
where there was a demand for Northern labour, and it was on
one of his visits home that he fell in love with Mary Baker.
They were married at Mark Baker's house December 12, 1843,
and Glover took his bride back with him to Charleston, S. C.
Six months later he was stricken with yellow fever and died
in June, 1844, at Wilmington, N. C., where he had gone on
business.

His young wife was left in a miserable plight, being far from
home, among strangers and without money. Mr. Glover, how
ever, had been a Freemason, and his brothers of that order
came to his wife's relief. They buried her husband and paid
her railroad fare to New York, where she was met by her
brother George and taken back to her father's house. Here,
the following September, her son was born, and she named him
George Washington, after his father.

n See Appendix C.

CHAPTER II

MRS. GLOVER AS A WIDOW IN TILTON HER INTEREST IN MESMER
ISM AND CLAIRVOYANCE THE DISPOSAL OF HER SON

MARRIAGE TO DANIEL PATTERSON

MRS. GLOVER had now to face a hard situation. Her brief
married life had ended in adversity, and returning a widow to
her father's house, she was without means of support for
herself or her child, and she had neither the training nor
the disposition to take up an occupation, or to make herself
useful at home. Her sisters and brothers were married and
gone from home, and her parents were growing old and less
able to cope with her turbulent moods. Embarrassing as this
position would have been to most women, Mrs. Glover did not
apparently find it so. She took it for granted that she was
to receive not only the sympathy of her relatives but their
support and constant service, and that they should assume the
care of her child. She divided her time between her father's
house and that of her sister Abby, and her baby was left to her
mother and sister or sent up the valley to a Mrs. Varney, whose
son, John Varney, worked for the Tiltons. Frequently, too,
the child stayed with Mahala Sanborn, a neighbour who had
attended Mrs. Glover at his birth. But wherever he was, it was
not with his mother, who had shown a curious aversion to him
from the beginning. " Mary," said her father, " acts like an

26

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 27

old ewe that won't own its lamb. She won't have the boy
near her."

It must be said to the credit of the Baker family that they
met Mrs. Glover's demands with a patience and faithfulness
that seems remarkable from a family of such impatient and
dominating character. They gave her the best room in each
house and regulated their domestic affairs with a view to her
comfort. When her nerves were in such a state of irritation
that the slightest sound annoyed her, Mark Baker spread the
road in front of his house with straw and tan bark to deaden
the sound of passing waggons. The noise of children disturbed
her, so the baby was sent to Mahala Sanborn or to Mrs.
Tilton. At her sister's house they tiptoed about the rooms
and placed covered bricks against every sill that the doors
might close softly. At both houses she was rocked to sleep
like a child in the arms of her father or her sister, and then
gently carried to bed. Sometimes, at the Tiltons', this task
fell to John Varney, the hired man, who like the members of her
own family, rocked her to sleep and carried her to bed. To
put an end to this practice, Mrs. Tilton ordered a large cradle
made for Mrs. Glover. It was built with a balustrade and an
extension seat at one end upon which Varney could sit, and by
rocking himself as in a chair, also rock the cradle. Another
symptom of her pathological condition was her intense desire
for swinging. A large swing was hung from hooks in the
ceiling of her room at Mrs. Tilton's, and here she was swung
hours at a time by her young nephew, Albert Tilton. When
Albert tired of the exercise he sometimes hired a substitute,
so that " swinging Mrs. Glover " became a popular way of

28 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

earning an honest penny among the village boys. One of these
" boys " has described his experience to the writer. " Some
days," he said, " Mrs. Glover was so nervous she couldn't have
anybody in the room with her, and then I used to tie a string
to the seat and swing her from outside her bedroom door."
Mark Baker and John Varney were obliged often to carry her
in their arms and walk the floor with her at night to soothe
her excitable nerves, and when everything else failed, Mark
used to send for old " Boston John " Clark to come and quiet
Mrs. Glover by mesmerism. Clark was a bridge-builder from
one of the villages up the valley who had acquired some reputa
tion as a mesmerist, practising, like Dr. Ladd, upon any sub
ject who was willing, and particularly happy when he dis
covered a " sensitive " like Mrs. Glover. He never failed to
soothe her, and after one of his visits, the Baker family enjoyed
a space of quiet from the incessant turmoil of Mary's nerves.
Yet Mrs. Glover was neither helpless nor incapacitated. She did
not keep to her bed and she was able to go about the village and
to attend to whatever she was interested in. Her neighbours
remember her at church gatherings and at the sewing circle,
where she went regularly although she did not sew. It was
one of Mrs. Glover's notions, after her six months in Charles
ton, to imitate the Southern women in little matters of dress
and manner, and at the sewing circle she sat and gave voluble
descriptions of her life in the South and the favourable im
pression she had made there, deploring the loss of the daily
horseback ride she had been accustomed to take in South
Carolina.

Twice Mrs. Glover made an effort at self-support. While

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 29

living with Mrs. Tilton she taught a class of children, holding
the sessions in a small building, once used as a shop, on the
Tilton place. After a few weeks' trial she gave it up. A little
later she repeated the experiment, but with the same result.
Although Mrs. Glover was later to have a " college " of her
own, and to be its president and sole instructor, teaching was
assuredly not her vocation in these early Tilton days. Perhaps
a dozen of her Tilton pupils are still living, and they are fond
of relating anecdotes of the days when they went to school
to Mrs. Glover. They all remember that the teacher required
the class to march around the room singing the following

refrain :

" We will tell Mrs. Glover
How much we love her;
By the light of the moon
We will come to her." 1

Mrs. Glover began now to enjoy considerable local fame on
account of her susceptibility to mesmeric influence, and her
clairvoyant powers. She had developed a habit of falling into
trances. Often, in the course of a social call, she would close
her eyes and sink into a state of apparent unconsciousness, dur
ing which she could describe scenes and events. The curious
and superstitious began to seek her advice while she was in

1 This song was evidently an adaptation of a popular " round " of that period,
which ran :

" Go to Jane Glover
And tell her I love her
And by the light of the moon
I will come to her."

A correspondent gives the information that in Crieff, Perthshire, Scotland,
a similar " round " was in popular use previous to the year 1840, the words
of which were :

"Go to .Tonn Glover
And tell her I love her
And by the light of the moon
I will come to her."

30 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

this trance state. " Boston John " Clark experimented with
her, putting her into the mesmeric sleep and attempting to
trace lost or stolen articles by means of her clairvoyance.
Once she tried to locate a drowned body. These efforts were
not attended with any great success, but interest in mesmerism
and clairvoyance ran high, and any one who could fall into
a trance and describe things was sure to be an object of wonder.
John Varney conceived the notion of turning this talent of
Mrs. Glover's to practical account. " Boston John " was sent
for, and Mrs. Glover, at Varney's suggestion, described the
hiding-place of Captain Kidd's treasure, which was then a
topic of exciting speculation. She indicated a spot near the
city of Lynn, Mass. Varney and his cronies set out for the
place and spent several days digging for the treasure, but
without success.

A few years later when spiritualism swept over the country,
Mrs. Glover took on the symptoms of a " medium." Like
the Fox sisters, she heard mysterious rappings at night, she
saw " spirits " of the departed standing by her bedside, and
she received messages in writing from the dead. There are
people living who remember very distinctly the spiritism craze
in Tilton, and who witnessed Mrs. Glover's manifestations of
mediumship. One elderly woman recalls a night spent with
Mrs. Glover when her rest was constantly disturbed by the
strange rappings and by Mary's frequent announcements of
the " appearance " of different spirits as they came and went.

Mark Baker's house was one of those where spirit seances
were held. The whole community was more or less interested
and a few went to extremes. One of this number became

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 31

so excited over the wonderful phenomena of Mrs. Glover's
writing mediumship that his mind was temporarily unbalanced.
A former Tilton woman, who remembers these events, writes
of Mrs. Glover's ability as a writing medium : " This was by
no means looked upon as anything discreditable, but only as
a matter of great astonishment."

During these years, too, Mrs. Glover tried her hand at
writing. She spent many hours in her room " composing
poetry," which sometimes appeared in the poet's corners of
local newspapers, and there is a tradition that she wrote a love
story for Godey's Lady's Booh. This literary tendency was
a valuable asset, which Mrs. Glover made the most of. It
gave her a certain prestige in the community, and she was not
loth to pose as an " authoress." Perhaps it was this early
habit of looking upon herself as a literary authority which
led her to take those curious liberties with English which have
always been characteristic of her. She drew largely upon the
credit of the language, sometimes producing a word or evolving
a pronunciation which completely floored her hearers. Some
of these words and phrases have passed into local bywords.
" When I vociferate so loudly, why do you not respond with
greater alacrity ? " she sometimes seriously demanded of her
attendants. She referred to plain John Varney as " Mr.
Ve-owney," and few ordinary words were left unadorned. She
sought also to improve upon nature in the matter of her own
good looks. Although she had a beautiful complexion, she
rouged and powdered, and although she had excellent teeth, she
had some of them replaced by false ones, " made entirely of
platinum," as Mrs. Glover described them.

32 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

On the whole, it is no wonder that Mrs. Glover was not taken
seriously in her own town. Artificiality spread over all her
acts, and in no relation in life did she impress even her nearest
friends or her own family with genuine feeling or sincerity.
Indeed, she was bitterly censured in those years for the more
active faults of selfish and unfilial conduct and a strange lack
of the sense of maternal duty. In 1851 Mrs. Glover had given
her son, George, to Mahala Sanborn. The boy, having reached
the age of seven, was growing too large to be sent about
from one house to another to be looked after. Mrs. Glover's
mother had died of typhoid fever in November, 1849, and
Mrs. Tilton was growing each year more impatient and weary
of Mrs. Glover's conduct. So when Mahala Sanborn married
Russell Cheney and was preparing to move away from Tilton,
Mrs. Glover begged her to take George to live with her perma
nently. Mrs. Cheney, who was attached to the boy, at last
consented to do so, and George accompanied her and her hus
band to their new home in North Groton, and was called by
their name.

Mark Baker, in the fall of 1850, had married Mrs. Elizabeth
Patterson Duncan, a widow of Londonderry, N. H., and moved
into the village of Tilton. Mrs. Glover continued to live at
home, spending most of her time there now, for her step
mother was of a pliable nature and gentle disposition, and
had taken up the task of attending to Mary's wants with a
patience equal to that of Mrs. Glover's own mother.

Notwithstanding Mrs. Glover's shortcomings of temper, she
could be amiable and attractive enough when she chose. To
men she always showed her most winning side, and she had

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 33

never lacked admirers. One of her suitors at this time was
Dr. Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist practising in Tilton
and the villages thereabouts. Dr. Patterson was large, hand
some, and genial. He wore a full beard, dressed in a frock
coat and silk hat, and was popular among his patrons. Al
though he was industrious enough at his business and made a
living sufficient for himself, he was not a genius at money-
making, and he was not inclined to exert himself much more
than was necessary. From his first acquaintance with Mrs.
Glover he was determined to marry her. Conscientious Mark
Baker, when he heard of Dr. Patterson's intention, visited the
dentist and told him of Mary's ill-health and nervous afflictions,
but interference only strengthened the doctor's determination,
and on June 21, 1853, the wedding took place at Mark Baker's
house, although Dr. Patterson was obliged to carry his bride
downstairs from her room for the ceremony, and back again
when it was over. Mrs. Glover had been very ill and weak
that spring and was not yet recovered. After her marriage
she spent the days of her convalescence in Tilton with her
husband, and then they went to Franklin, a neighbouring
village where Dr. Patterson was practising. But Mrs. Patter
son's invalidism, from being intermittent, soon became a settled
condition. She sent for her cradle while they were living
in Franklin, and the older residents still recall the day that
Patterson drove into town with a large waggon containing his
wife's cradle.

From Franklin they went, in a short time, to North Groton,
where the Cheneys and young George Glover were living.
North Groton, in the southern fringe of the White Mountains,

34 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

was very remote and could be reached only by stage. Like all
the White Mountain region, it was beautiful in the summer
season, but in the winter it was rugged and desolate. The
farmhouses were far apart, and the roads were sometimes im
passable. Often one would not see a neighbour or a passerby
for weeks at a time when the snow was deep; and the winters
there were very long. In a lane off the main road, the Patter
sons lived in a small frame house, which faced a deep wood.
At the right rose the mountains. Back of the house there was
a swift mountain brook, and there the dentist had built a small
sawmill, which he operated when there was not much dentist
work to do, or when his wife's ill-health made it necessary for
him to stay closely at home. He also practised homoeopathy
intermittently, but in the main he worked at his dentistry,
driving to the nearby towns to practise, and leaving his wife
alone or in the care of their occasional servant. There was
only one near neighbour. It is not strange that, under these
circumstances, Mrs. Patterson fell into a state of chronic illness
and developed ways that were considered peculiar by her
friends.

Her neighbours in North Groton tell the old story of her
illnesses, her hysteria, her high temper, and her unreasonable
demands on her husband. She required him to keep the wooden
bridge over the brook covered with sawdust to deaden the
sound of footsteps or vehicles, and, according to local tradi
tion, he spent many evenings killing discordant frogs, whose
noise disturbed Mrs. Patterson. Other stories sink further
toward burlesque. Old inhabitants of North Groton still re
member the long drive which a neighbour made for Mrs. Patter-

Photograph by Wm. W. Weller

DANIEL PATTERSON

Mrs. Eddy's second husband

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 35

son one stormy winter night. While the doctor was away
in Franklin, attending to his practice, Mrs. Patterson fell into
a state of depression which ended in hysterics. A neighbour
was sent for, and Mrs. Patterson declared she was dying, and
that her husband must be brought home at once. To her own
family this situation would not have seemed the desperate
affair it was to Mrs. Patterson's neighbour. Moved by the
entreaties of the dying wife, he set out at night on the thirty-
mile drive to Franklin, over roads that were almost impassable
from heavy snowdrifts. His horses became exhausted and he
stopped at Bristol only long enough to change them for a
fresh pair. Arriving at Franklin the next morning he made
haste to inform Dr. Patterson of his wife's dying condition.
To his astonishment the dentist looked up and remarked, " I
think she will live until I finish this job at least," and went
on with his work. When they reached North Groton late that
day, they found Mrs. Patterson sitting in her chair, serene
and cheerful, having apparently forgotten her indisposition
of the night before.

Gradually the sympathy of her neighbours was withdrawn
from Mrs. Patterson, and in North Groton, as in Tilton, she
came to be harshly criticised. Many years afterward, upon
the occasion of the dedication of the Christian Science Church
in Concord, N. H., July 16, 1904, a North Groton corre
spondent, under the head, " Time Makes Changes," wrote in
the Plymouth Record :

With the announcement of the dedication of the Christian Science
Church at Concord, the gift of Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy, the
thoughts of many of the older residents have turned back to the time when
Mrs. Eddy, as the wife of Daniel Patterson, lived in this place. These

36 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

people remember the woman at that time as one who carried herself above
her fellows. With no stretch of the imagination they remember her un
governable temper and hysterical ways, and particularly well do they
remember the night ride of one of the citizens who went for her husband
to calm her in one of her unreasonable moods. The Mrs. Eddy of to-day
is not the Mrs. Patterson of then, for this is a sort of Mr. Hyde and Dr.
Jekyll case, and the woman is now credited with many charitable and
kindly acts.

Although Mrs. Patterson now lived near her boy, George,
she did not see a great deal of him. He had started to go
to school, and used sometimes to stop at his mother's house
on his way home, but she never cared to have him with her.
Instead, and by some perverse law of her nature, she showed
a deep affection for the infant son of her neighbour, naming
him Mark after her father, and making plans for his education
and future. In 1857 Russell Cheney and his wife went West
to live, taking George Glover with them. George was now
thirteen. He was excited at the prospect of the trip, and
after bidding his mother good-bye, he was taken to Tilton a
day before the time set for their departure, to say farewell
to his Grandfather Baker and his Aunt Tilton.

In Retrospection and Introspection Mrs. Eddy gives the fol
lowing account of her separation from her son :

After returning to the paternal roof, I lost all my husband's property,
except what money I had brought with me; and remained with my parents
until after my mother's decease.

A few months before my father's second marriage to Mrs. Elizabeth
Patterson Duncan, sister of Lieutenant-Governor George W. Patterson,
of New York my little son, about four years of age, was sent away
from me, and put under the care of our family nurse, who had married,
and resided in the northern part of New Hampshire. I had no training
for self-support, and my home I regarded as very precious. The night
before my child was taken from me, I knelt by his side throughout the
dark hours, hoping for a vision of relief from this trial. The following

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 37

lines are taken from my poem, " Mother's Darling," written after this
separation :

" Thy smile through tears, as sunshine o'er the sea,

Awoke new beauty in the surge's roll!
Oh, life is dead, bereft of all, with thee,
Star of my earthly hope, babe of my soul."

My dominant thought in marrying again was to get back my child,
but after our marriage his stepfather was not willing he should have a
home with me. A plot was consummated for keeping us apart. The
family to whose care he was committed, very soon removed to what was
then regarded as the Far West.

After his removal a letter was read to my little son informing him
that his mother was dead and buried. Without my knowledge he was
appointed a guardian, and I was then informed that my son was lost.
Every means within my power was employed to find him, but without
success. We never met again until he had reached the age of thirty- four,
had a wife and two children, and by a strange providence had learned
that his mother still lived, and came to see me in Massachusetts.

From Enterprise, Minn., where the Cheneys settled, Mrs.
Patterson often had news of her son. Mrs. Cheney and her
husband wrote frequently to their relatives and friends in North
Groton and Tilton, giving details of their life and of George's
progress. Mr. Cyrus Blood of North Groton, one of George
Glover's early chums, remembers a visit he paid to Dr. Patter
son, during which Mrs. Patterson read a letter from George,
in which he told her of leaving the Cheneys and enlisting in
the Civil War. This was in 1861 when George was seventeen.
" She seemed as well pleased, and as proud," writes Mr. Blood,
" as any mother with a boy in the army." The present writer
has also read a letter from Mrs. Patterson to P. P. Quimby of
Portland, Me., dated July 29, 1865, in which she describes
her son as " mortally ill at Enterprise, Minn.," and declares
that unless he is better at once she will start for the West
" on Monday."

38 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

George Glover made an excellent record as a soldier; was
wounded at Shiloh and honourably discharged; was appointed
United States Marshal of the Dakotas; knocked about the
Western states as a prospector and miner, and finally settled
at Lead, S. D., where he now carries on his mining enterprises.
He has a wife and four children, the eldest of whom is a
daughter named Mary Baker Glover, for her grandmother.
Mrs. Eddy and her son met for the first time 'after their long
separation, in 1879, Mrs. Eddy having sent a mysterious tele
gram begging him to come to her immediately. She was then
living in Lynn. The Glovers live in a handsome house in Lead
which Mrs. Eddy built for her son in 1902. None of the
family is a Christian Scientist. Several years ago when Glover's
eldest daughter died his neighbours expressed amazement that
he had not called upon Mrs. Eddy to cure her. " Why, do you
know," replied George, " I never thought of mother ! "

In March, 1860, three years after George had gone West
with the Cheneys, Dr. and Mrs. Patterson became involved in
a dispute with a neighbour and moved away, this time trying
Rumney, the next village. At first they boarded with Mrs.
John Herbert, a widow at Rumney Station, and later they lived
by themselves in a house belonging to John Dearborn in Rumney
Village, a mile from the Station. Mrs. Patterson's reputation
had preceded her and she was at once a topic of discussion.
She went out but seldom, and then propped up with pillows
in a carriage. It was said that she suffered from a spinal
disease. From the Herbert family and from her husband she
required the utmost attention. Dr. Patterson waited upon her
constantly when he was at home, carrying her downstairs to

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 39

her meals and back again to her room. When he was not at
home, she was able to walk about and attend to most of her
wants unassisted; but when he returned she relapsed into a
state of helplessness.

From the traditions which abound in these villages it is
evident that the Pattersons' marriage was an unfortunate one.
Dr. Patterson's bluff and rather coarse geniality must greatly
have irritated his high-strung and self-centred wife, and there
is no doubt that, on his part, he came quickly to see the force
of Mark Baker's advice against the marriage. He seems to
have responded faithfully to his wife's demands, and to have
endured her irascibility with patience. It was probably a
relief to both when Dr. Patterson went South, after the Civil
War began, in the hope of securing more profitable employ
ment as an army surgeon. He visited the early battlefields, and,
straying into the enemies' lines, was taken captive and sent
to a Southern prison. In his absence Mrs. Patterson showed
that she was capable of a gentler sentiment toward her husband.
During his confinement in prison she published (June 20, 1862)
the following poem, the last stanza of which is slightly reminis
cent of certain lines in Lord Byron's poem to the more celebrated
patriot, Bonnivard:

TO A BIRD FLYING SOUTHWARD
By MABY A. PATTERSON

Alas ! sweet bird, of fond ones reft,
Alone in Northern climes thus left,
To seek in vain through airy space
Some fellow-warbler's resting place;
And find upon the hoarse wind's song
No welcome note is borne along.

40 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Then wildly through the skies of blue,
To spread thy wings of dappled hue,
As if forsooth this frozen zone
Could yield one joy for bliss that's floWrt}
While sunward as thine eager flight,
That glance is fixed on visions bright.

And grief may nestle in that breast,

Some vulture may have robbed its rest,

But guileless as thou art, sweet thing,

With melting melody thou'lt sing;

The vulture's scream your nerves unstrung,

But, birdie, 'twas a woman's tongue.

I, too, would join thy sky-bound flight,
To orange groves and mellow light,
And soar from earth to loftier doom>,
And light on flowers with sweet perfumey
And wake a genial, happy lay-
Where hearts are kind, and earth so gay.

Oh! to the captive^s cell I'd sing

A song of hope and freedom bring

An olive leaf I'd quick let fall,

And lift our country's blackened pall;

Then homeward seek my frigid zone,

More chilling to the heart alone.

Lone as a solitary star, 2
Lone as a vacant sepulchre,
Yet not alone ! my Father's call
Who marks the sparrow in her fall .
Attunes my ear to joys elate,
The joys I'll sing at Heaven's
Rumney, June 20, 1862.

2 Byron's " Prisoner of Chillon," when relating how the bird perched and
sang upon the grating of his donjon, exclaims :.

" I sometimes deem'd that tt might be
My brother's soul come down to me ;
But then at last away it flew,
And then 'twas mortal well I knew,
For he would never thus have flown,
And left me twice so doubly lone,
Lone as the corse within its shroud^.
Lone as a solitary cloud, " etc..

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 41

Left alone, and once more penniless, after her husband's im
prisonment, Mrs. Patterson again fell back upon her relatives.
She wrote to Mrs. Tilton for assistance. Mrs. Tilton went to
Rumney, settled Mrs. Patterson's affairs there, and took her
back to Tilton.

It is this part of her career that Mrs. Eddy has sought to
blot out of existence. She makes no reference to it in her
autobiography, and in another place has said that no special
account is to be made of the years between 1844 and 1866.
These twenty-two lost years between her twenty-third and
forty-sixth birthdays were, as has been shown, spent in fretful
ill-health and discontent. It was a hard life, sordid in many of
its experiences, petty in its details, and narrow in its limitations.
Yet there is nothing to show that Mrs. Eddy made an effort
to improve her hard situation, or to make herself useful to
others ; and at forty she was known only for her eccentricities.

CHAPTER III

MRS. PATTERSON FIRST HEARS OF DR. QUIMBY HER ARRIVAL IN

PORTLAND QUIMBY AND HIS " SCIENCE "

WHILE Dr. and Mrs. Patterson were living in Rumney, it
was announced in the village that a new healer, Phineas Park-
hurst Quimby of Portland, Me., would visit Concord, N. H.,
to treat all the sick who would come to him. Stories of the
marvellous cures he was said to perform had spread throughout
New England. Stubborn diseases, which had resisted the skill
of regular physicians, were reported as yielding promptly to
the magic of the Quimby method. This new doctor, so the
story ran, used no medicines, and never failed to heal ; and upon
hearing these tales the sick and the suffering particularly those
who were the victims of long-standing and chronic diseases
took heart and tried to reach him. Among these was Mrs.
Patterson. Her husband wrote to Dr. Quimby from Rumney
on October 14, 1861, that Mrs. Patterson had been an invalid
from a spinal disease for many years. She had heard of
Quimby's " wonderful cures," and desired him to visit her. If
Dr. Quimby intended to come to Concord, as they had heard,
Dr. Patterson would " carry " his wife to see him. If not,
he would try to get her to Portland.

Dr. Quimby did not visit Concord, and Dr. Patterson
soon went South, but in the following spring (May 9, 1862)

Mrs. Patterson herself wrote to Quimby from Rumney, appeal-

42

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 43

ing to him to help her, and setting forth her truly pathetic
situation. She had been better, the letter said, but the shock
of hearing that her husband had " been captured by the
Southrons " and again prostrated her. She had, she wrote,
" full confidence " in Dr. Quiraby's " philosophy, as explained
in your circular," and she begged him to come to Rumney.
She had been ill for six years, she said, and " only you can
save me." Hard as the journey to Portland would be, she
thought she was sufficiently " excitable," even in her feeble
condition, to undertake it. 1

Although Quimby could not go to Rumney as she requested,
Mrs. Patterson clung to the idea of seeing him. After she
had returned to her sister's home in Tilton, she talked of
Quimby constantly, and begged Mrs. Tilton to send her to
Portland for treatment. But Mrs. Tilton would not consent,
nor provide money for the trip, as she considered Dr. Quimby
a quack and thought the reports of his cures were greatly ex
aggerated. Instead, she sent Mrs. Patterson to a water cure
Dr. Tail's Hydropathic Institute at Hill, N. H. At the Hill
institution Dr. Quimby was just then a topic of eager interest
among the patients, and Mrs. Patterson finally resolved to reach
Portland. She wrote again to Dr. Quimby from Hill, telling
him that although she had been at Dr. Vail's cure for several
months, she had not been benefited and would die unless he,
Quimby, could help her. " I can sit up but a few minutes
at a time," she wrote. " Do you think I can reach you without
sinking from the effects of the journey? "

Mrs. Patterson knew that it was useless to appeal again to

1 This letter, with others from Mrs. Patterson to Dr. Quimby, is in the
possession of Quimby's son, George A. Quimby of Belfast, Me.

44 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

her sister, and as there was no one else, she used her wits.
From time to time she applied to Mrs. Tilton for small sums
of money for extra expenses. By hoarding these she soon had
enough to pay her fare to Portland, and she, therefore, set out.

Mrs. Patterson arrived at the International Hotel in October,
1862, and with scores of others, who went flocking to Quimby,
she was helped up the stairs to his office.

Dr. Quimby now becomes such a potent influence in Mrs.
Patterson's life that some understanding of the man and his
theories is necessary for any complete comprehension of her
subsequent career.

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was " Doctor " only by courtesy :
he had taken no university degree and had studied in no regular
school of medicine. He was regarded by the educated public
as an amiable humbug or a fanatic, but by hundreds of his
patients he was looked upon as a worker of miracles. His
methods resembled those of no regular physician then in practice,
nor did he imitate the spiritualistic and clairvoyant healers
who at that time flourished in New England. He gave no
drugs, went into no trances, used no incantations, and did
not heal by mesmerism after he had discovered his " science."
He professed to make his patients well and happy purely by
the benevolent power of mind.

Fantastic as this idea then seemed, Quimby was no ordinary
quack. He did not practise on the credulous for money, and
his theories represented at least independent thought and pa"
tient, life-long study. He was born in New Lebanon, N. H.,
February 16, 1802, but spent the larger part of his life in
Belfast, Me. He was one of seven children, and his father was

HISTORY OP CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 45

a poor, Hardworking blacksmith. Quimby, therefore, had prac
tically no educational advantages ; indeed, he spent actually
only six weeks in school. Apprenticed as a boy to a clock-
maker, he became an adept at his trade. The Quimby clock
is still a domestic institution in New England; hundreds made
by Quimby's own hands are still keeping excellent time. Quimby
had an ingenious mind and a natural aptitude for mechanics.
lie invented, among other things, a band-saw much like one in
use at the present time, and he was one of the first makers of
daguerreotypes. From the first he disclosed one rare mental
quality: his keen power of observation and originality of
thought forbade his taking anything for granted. He recog
nised no such thing as accepted knowledge. He developed into
a mild-mannered New England Socrates, constantly looking
into his own mind, and subjecting to proof all the commonplace
beliefs of his friends. He read deeply in philosophy and
science, and loved nothing better than to discuss these subjects
at length.

In those days a man of Quimby's intellectual type did not
lack subjects of interest. In the '30's the first wave of mental
science, animal magnetism, and clairvoyance swept over New
England. The atmosphere was charged with the occult, the
movement ranging all the way from phrenology and mind-
reading to German transcendentalism. Quimby's interest was
directly stimulated by the visit of Charles Poyen, the well-
known French mesmerist, who came to lecture in Belfast. The
inquiring clock-maker became absorbed in Poyen's theories,
formed his acquaintance, and followed him from town to town.
Inevitably, Quimby began experimenting in the subject which

46 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

so interested him. Discovering that he had mesmeric power,
he exercised it upon many of his friends and easily repeated
the performance of Poyen and other exhibitors. From becom
ing their imitator he became their rival, and abandoning his
workshop, started out as a professional mesmerist. Among the
wonder-workers of the early '40's, " Park " Quimby, as he was
popularly called, became pre-eminent. Always considered an
original character in his native village, he was now regarded as
an outright crank, and was the subject of much amiable jocu
larity.

In the course of his experiments, Quimby discovered that his
most sensitive subject was Lucius Burkmar, a boy about seven
teen years old, over whom he had acquired almost unlimited
hypnotic control. The two travelled all over New England,
performing mesmerics feats that have hardly been duplicated
since, everywhere arousing great popular interest, and, in certain
quarters, great hostility. Psychic phenomena were then incom
pletely understood ; clergymen preached against mesmerism,
or animal magnetism, as the work of the devil, a revival of
ancient witchcraft; while the practical man regarded it as
pure fraud. The newspapers frequently vilified Quimby and
Burkmar, and they were more than once threatened by mobs.

Then, as now, the public mind associated the occult sciences
with the cure of physical disease. Clairvoyants, magnetisers,
and mind-readers treated all imaginable ills. When blind
folded, they had the power according to their advertisements
of looking into the bodies of their patients, examining their
inmost organs, indicating the affected parts, and prescribing
remedies. Hundreds of men, women, and children, whose cases

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 47

" the doctors had given up as hopeless," fervently testified to
their power. Thus Quimby and Burkmar inevitably received
numerous appeals from the sick. After a few trials, Quimby
became convinced that in a mesmeric state Burkmar could
diagnose and treat disease. Though absolutely ignorant of
medicine and anatomy, Burkmar described minutely the ailments
of numerous patients, and prescribed medicines, which, although
absurd to a physician, apparently produced favourable results.
For three or four years Quimby and Burkmar practised with
considerable success. Consumptives, according to popular re
port, began to get well, the blind saw, and the halt walked.

Quimby then made an important discovery. After careful
observation, he concluded that neither Burkmar nor his remedies,
in themselves, had the slightest power. Burkmar, he believed,
did not himself diagnose the case. He merely reported what
the patient, or some one else present in the room, imagined the
disease to be. He had, Quimby thought, a clairvoyant or mind-
reading faculty, by which he simply reproduced the opinion
which the sick had themselves formed. Quimby also discovered
that, in instances where improvement actually took place, the
drug prescribed had nothing to do with it. Once Burkmar, in
the mesmeric state, ordered a concoction too expensive for the
patient's purse. Quimby mesmerised him again ; and this time
he prescribed a cheaper remedy which served the purpose
quite as well. After a few experiences of this kind, Quimby
concluded that Burkmar's prescriptions did not produce the
cures, but that the patients cured themselves. Burkmar's only
service was that he implanted in the sick man's mind an un
shakable faith that he would get well. Any other person, or

48 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

any drug, Quimby declared, which could put the patient in
this attitude of mental receptivity and give his own mind a
chance to work upon the disease, would accomplish the same
result. He made this discovery the basis of an elaborate and
original system of mind cure; he dropped mesmerism, dis
missed Burkmar, and began to work out his theory. He ex
perimented for several years in Belfast, and, in 1859, opened
an office in Portland.

Quimby had the necessary mental and moral qualifications
for his work. His personality inspired love and confidence,
and his patients even now affectionately recall his kind-hearted
ness, his benevolence, and his keen perception. Even his oppo
nents in the controversy which has raged over his work and that
of Mrs. Eddy, speak well of him. " On his rare humanity and
sympathy," says Mrs. Eddy, " one could write a sonnet."

He was a small man, both in stature and in build, quick,
sensitive, and nervous in his movements. His large, well-
formed head stood straight on erect, energetic shoulders. He
had a high, broad forehead, and silken white hair and beard.
His eyes, arched with heavy brows, black, deep-set, and pene
trating, seemed, as one of his patients has written, " to see all
through the falsities of life and far into the depths and into
the spirit of things." At times his eyes flashed with good
nature and wit, for Quimby by no means lacked the jovial
virtues. If his countenance suggested one quality more than
another, it was honesty; whatever the public thought of his
ideas, no one who ever saw him face to face doubted the man's
absolute sincerity. He demanded the same sympathy which
he himself gave. He dealt kindly with honest doubters, but

Courtesy of George A. Quitnby

PHIXEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 49

would have nothing to do with the scornful. Unless one really
wished to be cured, he said, his methods had no virtue. On
one occasion, instead of taking his place beside a certain patient,
he turned his chair directly around and sat back to back.
" That's the way you feel toward me," he declared. His offices
were constantly filled with patients, and his mail was enormous.
People came to consult him from all over New England and
the Far West. He treated " absently " thousands who could
not visit him in person.

Mrs. Julius A. Dresser, one of his early patients and con
verts, thus describes her first meeting with Mr. Quimby :

I found a kindly gentleman who met me with such sympathy and
gentleness that I immediately felt at ease. He seemed to know at once
the attitude of mind of those who applied to him for help, and adapted
himself to them accordingly. His years of study of the human mind, of
sickness in all its forms, and of the prevailing religious beliefs, gave him
the ability to see through the opinions, doubts, and fears of those who
sought his aid, and put him in instant sympathy with their mental
attitudes. He seemed to know that I had come to him feeling that he was
a last resort, and with little faith in him and his mode of treatment.
But, instead of telling me that I was not sick, he sat beside me and
explained to me what my sickness was, how I got into the condition, and
the way I could have been taken out of it through the right understanding.
He seemed to see through the situation from the beginning, and explained
the cause and effect so clearly that I could see a little of what he meant.
My case was so serious, however, that he did not at first tell me I could
be made well. But there was such an effect produced by his explanation,
that I felt a new hope within me, and began to get well from that day.

He continued to explain my case from day to day, giving me some
idea of his theory and its relation to what I had been taught to believe,
and sometimes sat silently with me for a short time. I did not understand
much that he said, but I felt the spirit and the life that came with his
words; and I found myself gaining steadily. Some of these pithy sayings
of his remained constantly in mind, and were very helpful in preparing
the way for a better understanding of his thought, such, for instance, as
his remark that, " Whatever we believe, that we create," or, " Whatever
opinion we put into a thing, that we take out of it."

50 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

In all the relations of life, Quimby seems to have been loyal
and upright. Outside of his theory he lived only for his family
and was the constant playmate of his children. His only inter
est in his patients was to make them well. He treated all who
came, whether they could pay or not. For several years
Quimby kept no accounts and made no definite charges. The
patients, when they saw fit, sent him such remuneration as they
wished. Inevitably, he drew his followers largely from the
poor and the desperately ill. " People," he would say, " send
for me and the undertaker at the same time; and the one who
gets there first gets the case."

Quimby was thoroughly convinced that he had solved the
riddle of life, and that ultimately the whole world would accept
his ideas. His subject possessed him. He wearied his family
almost to desperation with it, and wore out all his friends. He
discussed it at length with any one who would listen. To put
it in writing, to teach it, to transmit it to posterity, that
was his consuming idea. His only fear was lest he should
die before the " Truth " had made a lasting impress. He
wrote about it in the newspapers, not, however, as extensively
as he desired, for the editors seldom printed his articles, re
garding them as the veriest rubbish. He selected, here and
there, especially appreciative and intelligent patients, discussed
his doctrine with them exhaustively, and enjoined them to teach
unbelievers. His following was not wholly among the ignorant
and humble. Edwin Reed, ex-mayor of Bath, Me., declares
that Quimby cured him of total blindness. He visited him as
a young graduate of Bowdoin, had his sight completely restored,
spent several months studying the theory, and left with the

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 51

conviction, which he has never lost, that Quimby was a strong
and original thinker. Julius A. Dresser, whose name figures
largely in the history of mental healing, early became absorbed
in Quimby. For several years he was associated with him,
receiving patients and explaining, as a preliminary to their
meeting with the doctor, his ideas and methods. In 1863 Dr.
Warren F. Evans, a Swedenborgian clergyman, visited Quimby
twice professionally. He became a convert, and, in several
books well known among students of mental healing, developed
the Quimby doctrine. " Quimby," he said, " seemed to repro
duce the wonders of Gospel history."

About 1859 Quimby began to put his ideas into permanent
form. George A. Quimby thus describes his father's literary
methods : 2

Among his earlier patients in Portland were the Misses Ware, daughters
of the late Judge Ashur Ware, of the United States Admiralty Court;
and they became much interested in " the Truth," as he called it. But
the ideas were so new, and his reasoning was so divergent from the
popular conceptions, that they found it difficult to follow him or remember
all he said; and they suggested to him the propriety of putting into writing
the body of his thoughts.

From that time he began to write out his ideas, which practice he con
tinued until his death, the articles now being in the possession of the
writer of this sketch. The original copy he would give to the Misses
Ware; and it would be read to him by them, and, if he suggested any
alteration, it would be made, after which it would be copied either by the
Misses Ware or the writer of this, and then re-read to him, that he
might see that all was just as he intended it. Not even the most trivial
word or the construction of a sentence would be changed without con
sulting him. He was given to repetition; and it was with difficulty that
he could be induced to have a repeated sentence or phrase stricken out,
as he would say, "If that idea is a good one, and true, it will do no
harm to have it in two or three times." He believed in the hammering
process, and in throwing an idea or truth at the reader till it would be
firmly fixed in his mind.

3 Article in the New England Magazine, March, 1888,

52 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

In six years Quimby produced ten volumes of manuscripts.
In them he discussed a variety of subjects, all from the stand
point of his theory. He wrote copiously on Religion, Disease,
Spiritualism, " Scientific Interpretations of Various Parts of the
Scriptures," Clairvoyance, " The Process of Sickness," " Re
lation of God to Man," Music, Science, Error, Truth, Happi
ness, Wisdom, " The Other World," " Curing the Sick," and
dozens of other topics. He gave all his patients access to
these manuscripts, and permitted all who wished to make copies,
overjoyed whenever he found one interested enough to do this.
He also encouraged his followers to write, themselves, frequently
correcting their essays and bringing them into harmony with
his own ideas. Quimby's writings, as a whole, have never been
published ; but the present writer has had free and continuous
use of them.

From these manuscripts can be deduced a complete and de
tailed philosophy of life and disease. They refute the asser
tion sometimes made, that Quimby was a spiritualist, or that
he made the slightest claim to divine revelation. Certain ad
mirers sometimes compared him with Christ ; but he himself
wrote a long dissertation called A Defence Against Making
Myself Equal with Christ. He usually calls his discovery the
" Science of Health," and " The Science of Health and Happi
ness " ; once or twice he describes it as " Christian Science."
Scores of times he refers to it as the " Science of Christ." He
also repeatedly calls it "The Principle," "The Truth," and
" Wisdom."

Though he never identified his doctrine with religion, and
never dreamed of founding an ecclesiastical organisation upon

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 53

it, his impulse at the bottom was religious. He believed that
Christ's mission was largely to the sick; that He and His
apostles performed cures in a natural manner ; and that he had
himself rediscovered their method. Jesus Christ, indeed, was
Quimby's great inspiration. He distinguished, however, be
tween the Principle Christ and the Man Jesus. This duality,
he said, manifested itself likewise in man.

In every individual, according to Quimby, there were two
persons. The first was the Truth, Goodness, and Wisdom into
which he had been naturally born. In this condition he was
the child of God, the embodiment of Divine Love and Divine
Principle. This man had no flesh, no bones, and no blood;
he did not breathe, eat, or sleep. He could never sin, never
become sick, never die. He knew nothing of matter, or of
the physical senses ; he was simply Spirit, Wisdom, Principle,
Truth, Mind, Science. Quimby, above all, loved to call him
the " Scientific Man." This first person was, so to speak, en
crusted in another man, formed of matter, sense, and all the
accumulated " errors " of time. This man had what Quimby
called " Knowledge " that is, the ideas heaped up by the
human mind. According to Quimby, this second man held the
first, or truly Scientific man, in bondage. The bonds consisted
of false human beliefs. The idea, above all, which held him
enthralled, was that of Disease. The man of Science knew
nothing of sickness. The man of Ignorance, however, con
sciously and unconsciously, had been impregnated for centuries
with this belief. His whole life, from earliest infancy, was
encompassed with suggestions of this kind. Parents constantly
suggest illness to their children ; doctors preach it twenty-four

54 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

hours a day; the clergy, the newspapers, books, ordinary con
versation, the whole modern world, thought Quimby, had en
gaged in a huge conspiracy to familiarise the human mind
with this false concept. This process had been going on for
thousands of years, until finally unhealthy ideas had triumphed
over healthy; beliefs had got the upper hand of truth; knowl
edge had supplanted wisdom ; ignorance had taken the place of
science; matter had superseded mind; Jesus had dethroned
Christ.

Quimby regarded his mission in the world as the reestablish-
ment of the original and natural harmony. Though his philos
ophy embraces the whole of life, he used all his energies in
eradicating one of man's many false " beliefs," or " errors,"
that of Disease. His method was simplicity itself. The med
ical profession constantly harped on the idea of sickness ;
Quimby constantly harped on the idea of health. The doctor
told the patient that disease was inevitable, man's natural in
heritance ; Quimby told him that disease was merely an " error,"
that it was created, " not by God, but by man," and that health
was the true and scientific state. " The idea that a beneficent
God had anything to do with disease," said Quimby, " is super
stition." " Disease," reads another of his manuscripts, " is
false reasoning. True scientific wisdom is health and happi
ness. False reasoning is sickness and death." Again he says:
" This is my theory : to put man in possession of a science that
will destroy the ideas of the sick, and teach man one living
profession of his own identity, with life free from error and
disease. As man passes through these combinations, they differ
one from another. . . . He is dying and living all the time to

HISTORY OP CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 55

error, till he dies the death of all his opinions and beliefs.
Therefore, to be free from death is to be alive in truth; for
sin, or error, is death, and science, or wisdom, is eternal life,
and this is the Christ." " My philosophy," he says at another
time, " will make man free and independent of all creeds and
laws of man, and subject him to his own agreement, he being
free from the laws of sin, sickness, and death."

Quimby, after dismissing Burkmar in 1845, never used mes
merism or manipulated his patients. Occasionally, after talk
ing for a time, he would dip his hands in water and rub the
patient's head. He always asserted that this was not an
essential part of the cure. His ideas were so startling, he said,
that the average mind could not grasp them, but required some
outward indication to bolster up its faith. The cure itself,
Quimby always insisted, was purely mental. 3

8 As far back as 1857, a writer in the Bangor Jeffersonian contradicts the
statement that Quimby cured mesmerically. " He sits down with his patient,"
the letter says, " and puts himself en rapport with him, which he does with
out producing the mesmeric sleep. The mind is used to overcome disease.
. . . There is no danger from disease when the mind is armed against it.
. . . He dissipates from the mind the idea of disease and induces in its
place an idea of health. . . . The mind is what it thinks it is and, if it
contends against the thought of disease and creates for itself an ideal form
of health, that form impresses itself upon the animal spirit and through that
upon the body."

CHAPTER IV

MRS. PATTERSON BECOMES QUIMBY's PATIENT AND PUPIL, HER

DEFENCE OF QUIMBY AND HIS THEORY HER GRIEF AT HIS

DEATH SHE ASKS MR. DRESSER TO TAKE UP QUIMBY's WORK

UPON reaching the hotel in Portland where Dr. Quimby had
his offices, Mrs. Patterson was received by Julius A. Dresser
and introduced to Dr. Quimby. George A. Quimby, Mrs. Julius
A. Dresser, and the Hon. Edwin Reed all remember Mrs. Pat
terson's appearance at this time. She was so feeble that she
had to be assisted up the stairs and into the waiting-room. She
had lost the beauty of her earlier years. Her figure was
emaciated, her face pale and worn, and her eyes were sunken.
After the fashion of the time, her hair hung about her shoulders
in loose ringlets, and her shabby dress suggested the hardness
and poverty of her life. Yet Mrs. Patterson, as she was intro
duced to other patients sitting about the waiting-room, made
something of an impression.

" Mrs. Patterson was presented to Dr. Quimby," says one of
the patients who was present, " as * the authoress,' and her man
ner was extremely polite and ingratiating. She wore a poke
bonnet and an old-fashioned dress, but my impression was that
her costume was intended to be a little odd, as in keeping with
her ' literary ' character. She seemed very weak, and we
thought she was a consumptive."

56

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 57

Mrs. Patterson almost immediately informed Quimby that
she was very poor, and asked his assistance in getting an in
expensive boarding-place. Quimby, by personal intercession,
obtained a room for her at reduced rates in Chestnut Street.
According to George A. Quimby, Quimby's son and secretary,
Mrs. Patterson's first stay in Portland lasted about three weeks.
As far as her health was concerned the visit seemed a complete
success. Under Quimby's treatment the spinal trouble dis
appeared and Mrs. Patterson left his office a well woman. But
this hardly-achieved visit to Portland meant much more to her
than that. For the first time in her life she felt an absorbing
interest. Her contact with Quimby and her inquiry into his
philosophy seem to have been her first great experience, the
first powerful stimulus in a life of unrestraint, disappointment,
and failure. Her girlhood had been a fruitless, hysterical re-
Volt against order and discipline. The dulness and meagreness
of her life had driven her to strange extravagances in conduct.
Neither of her marriages had been happy. Maternity had not
softened her nor brought her consolations. Up to this time
her masterful will and great force of personality had served
to no happy end. Her mind was turned in upon itself; she
had been absorbed in ills which seem to have been largely the
result of her own violent nature lacking any adequate outlet,
and, like disordered machinery, beating itself to pieces.

Quimby's idea gave her her opportunity, and the vehemence
with which she seized upon it attests the emptiness and hunger
of her earlier years. All during her stay in Portland she
haunted the old man's rooms, asking questions, reading manu
scripts, observing his treatment of his patients. Quimby at

58 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

first took a decided liking to her. " She's a devilish bright
woman," he frequently said. Always delighted to explain his
theories, in Mrs. Patterson he found a most appreciative listener.
Both on this and subsequent visits he permitted her to copy
certain of his manuscripts. Undoubtedly he saw in Mrs. Pat
terson, in her capacity as an " authoress," a woman who could
assist him in the matter dearest to his heart, the popularisa
tion of his doctrines.

Her devotion to her teacher was that of a long-imprisoned
nature toward its deliverer. Her greatest desire seems to have
been to teach Quimby's philosophy and to exalt him in the eyes
of men. Soon after her recovery she wrote the following letter
to the Portland Courier: *

When our Shakespeare decided that <; there were more things in this
world than were dreamed of in your philosophy," I cannot say of a verity
that he had a foreknowledge of P. P. Quimby. And when the school
Platonic anatomised the soul and divided it into halves to be reunited
by elementary attractions, and heathen philosophers averred that old Chaos
in sullen silence brooded o'er the earth until her inimitable form was
hatched from the egg of night, I would not at present decide whether
the fallacy was found in their premises or conclusions, never having
dated my existence before the flood. When the startled alchemist dis
covered, as he supposed, an universal solvent, or the philosopher's stone,
and the more daring Archimedes invented a lever wherewithal to pry up
the universe, I cannot say that in either the principle obtained in nature
or in art, or that it worked well, having never tried it. But, when by a
falling apple, an immutable law was discovered, we gave it the crown of
science, which is incontrovertible and capable of demonstration; hence that
was wisdom and truth. When from the evidence of the senses, my reason
takes cognizance of truth, although it may appear in quite a miraculous
view, I must acknowledge that as science which is truth uninvestigated.
Hence the following demonstration:

Three weeks since I quitted my nurse and sick room en route for
Portland. The belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of those

1 Letter by Mrs. M. M. Patterson (now Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy) in the
Portland Courier, November 7, 1862.

HISTORY OP CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 59

who were most anxious for it. With this mental and physical depression
I first visited P. P. Quimby; and in less than one week from that time
I ascended by a stairway of one hundred and eighty-two steps to the
dome of the City Hall, and am improving ad infinitum. To the most subtle
reasoning, such a proof, coupled too, as it is with numberless similar
ones, demonstrates his power to heal. Now for a brief analysis of this
power.

Is it spiritualism ? Listen to the words of wisdom. " Believe in God,
believe also in me; or believe me for the very work's sake." Now, then,
his works are but the result of superior wisdom, which can demonstrate
a science not understood; hence it were a doubtful proceeding not to believe
him for the work's sake. Well, then, he denies that his power to heal
the sick is borrowed from the spirits of this or another world; and let
us take the Scriptures for proof. " A kingdom divided against itself
cannot stand." How, then, can he receive the friendly aid of the dis
enthralled spirit, while he rejects the faith of the solemn mystic who
crosses the threshold of the dark unknown to conjure up from the vasty
deep the awestruck spirit of some invisible squaw?

Again, is it by animal magnetism that he heals the sick? Let us
examine. I have employed electro-magnetism and animal magnetism, and
for a brief interval have felt relief, from the equilibrium which I fancied
was restored to an exhausted system or by a diffusion of concentrated
action. But in no instance did I get rid of a return of all my ailments,
because I had not been helped out of the error in which opinions involved
us. My operator believed in disease, independent of the mind; hence
I could not be wiser than my master. But now I can see dimly at first,
and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's
faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth
is my recovery. This truth which he opposes to the error of giving in
telligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if
received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their
normal action; and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That
this is a science capable of demonstration, becomes clear to the minds of
those patients who reason upon the process of their cure. The truth which
he establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly un
conscious thereof) ; and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in
disease. At present I am too much in error to elucidate the truth, and
can touch only the keynote for the master hand to wake the harmony.
May it be in essays, instead of notes ! say I. After all, this is a very
spiritual doctrine; but the eternal years of God are with it, and it
must stand firm as the rock of ages. And to many a poor sufferer
may it be found, as by me, " the shadow of a great rock in a weary
land."

60 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Her extravagance brought general ridicule upon Quimby
and herself. " P. P. Quimby compared to Jesus Christ ? " ex
claimed the Portland Advertiser, in commenting on her letter,
" What next? " Mrs. Patterson again took up the cudgels.
She wrote in the Portland Courier:

Noticing a paragraph in the Advertiser, commenting upon some sen
tences of mine clipped from the Courier, relative to the science of P. P.
Quimby, concluding, "What next?" we would reply in due deference
to the courtesy with which they define their position. P. P. Quimby stands
upon the plane of wisdom with his truth. Christ healed the sick, but
not by jugglery or with drugs. As the former speaks as never man
before spake, and heals as never man healed since Christ, is he not
identified with truth? And is not this the Christ which is in him? We
know that in wisdom is life, " and the life was the light of man." P. P.
Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulchre of error, and health
is the resurrection. But we also know that " light shineth in darkness and
the darkness comprehendeth it not."

Mrs. Patterson expressed her admiration of Quimby in verse
also:

SONNET

Suggested by Reading the Remarkable Cure of
Captain J. W. Deering

To DR. P. P. QUIMBY

'Mid light of science sits the sage profound,
Awing with classics and his starry lore,
Climbing to Venus, chasing Saturn round,
Turning his mystic pages o'er and o'er,
Till, from empyrean space, his wearied sight
Turns to the oasis on which to gaze,
More bright than glitters on the brow of night
The self-taught man walking in wisdom's ways.
Then paused the captive gaze with peace entwined,
And sight was satisfied with thee to dwell;
But not in classics could the book-worm find
That law of excellence whence came the spell
Potent o'er all, the captive to unbind,
To heal the sick and faint, the halt and blind.
For the Courier. MARY M ' PATTERSON.

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 61

Mrs. Patterson returned in good health, as she thought, to
Sanbornton Bridge. Quimby became the great possession of
her life. She talked incessantly of him to all her friends, and
sought to persuade the sick to visit him. In 1863 she wrote
many times to Quimby. Her letters, now in the possession of
George A. Quimby, describe, in the most reverential terms, her
indebtedness.

The following extracts illustrate the tone of these communi
cations :

SANBORNTON BRIDGE, January 12, 1863.

. . . I am to all who see me a living wonder, and a living monument
of your power. ... I eat, drink, and am merry, have no laws to
fetter my spirit. Am as much an escaped prisoner, as my dear husband
was. . . . My explanation of your curative principle surprises people,
especially those whose minds are all matter. ... I mean not again
to look mournfully into the past, but wisely to improve the present.

In a letter dated Sanbornton Bridge, January 31, 1863, she
asks for " absent treatment." " Please come to me and remove
this pain." In this letter she says that her sister, Mrs. Tilton,
and her son, Albert Tilton, are going to visit Mr. Quimby.
She says that Albert smokes and drinks to excess, and begs
Quimby to treat him for these habits, " even when Albert is not
there." She explains that she herself has treated Albert to
help him overcome the habit of smoking and, while doing so,
felt " a constant desire to smoke ! " She asks Quimby to treat
her for this desire. In other letters Mrs. Patterson repeatedly
asks for absent treatments, and occasionally incloses a dollar
to pay for them.

In a letter from Saco, Me., September 14, 1863, Mrs. Patter
son says that Quimby 's "Angel Visits" (absent treatments)
are helping her, " I would like to have you in your omni-

62 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

presence visit me at eight o'clock this evening." On this occa
sion she specifies that she wishes to be treated for " small be
liefs," namely, " stomach trouble, backache, and constipation."

In the early part of 1864, Mrs. Patterson again spent two
or three months in Portland. She found congenial companions
in one Mrs. Sarah Crosby, who was likewise a patient of
Quimby's, and Miss Anna Mary Jarvis, who had brought her
consumptive sister to Quimby for treatment. ' Mrs. Crosby and
Mrs. Patterson became warm friends. They occupied adjoin
ing rooms in the same boarding-house and spent much time
together. Mrs. Patterson told Mrs. Crosby that she intended
to assist Quimby in his work. The latter, says Mrs. Crosby,
frequently expressed his pleasure at Mrs. Patterson's enthu
siasm. " He told me many times," she adds, " that I was not
so quick to perceive the Truth as Mrs. Patterson." Quimby
now gave Mrs. Patterson much of his time. He was practising
then mainly in the morning, and allowed Mrs. Patterson to
spend nearly every afternoon at his office. " She would work
with Dr. Quimby all afternoon," says Mrs. Crosby, " and then
she would come home and sit up late at night writing down
what she had learned during the day."

This second visit to Quimby seems to have been even more
stimulating to Mrs. Patterson than the first. She gave all her
time and strength to the study of this esoteric theory. It was
during this visit that she first manifested a desire to become
herself an active force in the teaching and practising of this
" Science." The desire became actually a purpose, perhaps an
ambition the only definite one she had ever known. She was
groping for a vocation. She must even then have seen before

MARY BAKER G. EDDY

Tintype by Prebie

From a tintype given to Mrs. Sarah G. Crosby in 1864. Mrs. Eddy was then

Mrs. Patterson

63

her new possibilities ; an opportunity for personal growth and
personal achievement very different from the petty occupations
of her old life. In one of her letters to Quimby, written some
months after she left Portland, there is this new note of aspira
tion and resolve:

Who is wise but you? . . . Doctor, I have a strong feeling of late
that I ought to be perfect after the command of science. ... I can
love only a good, honourable, and brave career; no other can suit me.

Upon leaving Portland, after this second visit, Mrs. Patter
son went to Warren, Me., to visit Miss Jarvis. Here she
seems to have tried Quimby's treatment upon Miss Jarvis,
putting into practice what she had learned from Quimby him
self during the last three months. " At the mere mention of
my going," writes Mrs. Patterson, " Miss Jarvis has a relapse
and is in despair."

She confidently believes that she has benefited the sick woman.
Once, after receiving an " absent treatment " from Quimby,
she successfully transmitted its blessings to Miss Jarvis. She
became so " cheerful and uplifted " that Miss Jarvis " was gay
and not at all sad." She also writes that she has been asked
to take outside cases at Warren, but that she feels herself not
yet ready, being still in her " pupilage."

In a letter from Warren, March 31, 1864, she says:

I wish you would come to my aid and help me to sleep. Dear Doctor
what could I do without you?

In a letter dated Warren, April 5, 1864:

. I met the former editor of the Banner of Light, and he heard for once
the truth about you. He thought you a defunct Spiritualist, before I
quitted him at Brunswick, he had endorsed your science and acknowledged
himself as greatly interested in it.

64 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

In another letter from Warren, under date of April 24,
1864, she says:

Jesus taught as man does not, who then is wise but you? Posted at the
public marts of this city is this notice, Mrs. M. M. Patterson will lecture
at the Town Hall on P. P. Quimby's Spiritual Science healing disease,
as opposed to Deism or Rochester Rapping Spiritualism.

In a letter dated Warren, May, 1864, she writes that she
has been ill, but,

I am up and about to-day, i.e., by the help of the Lord (Quimby).

Again,

Dear doctor, what could I do without you? ... I will not bow to
wealth for I cannot honour it as I do wisdom. . . . May the peace
of wisdom which passeth all understanding be and abide with you. Ever
the same in gratitude.

In one letter she describes the sudden appearance of Quimby's
wraith in her room. She spoke to it, she adds, " and then you
turned and walked away." " That," she says, " I call dodging
the issue." She repeatedly calls his treatment his " Science " ;
her illnesses, her " beliefs " or " errors " ; and her recoveries,
her " restorations."

In May, 1864, Mrs. Patterson left Miss Jarvis and went
to visit another friend, her fellow-patient, Mrs. Sarah G.
Crosby, at Albion, Me. Mrs. Crosby, 2 who is now living at
Waterville, Me., gives an interesting account of .this visit, which
lasted several months. Mrs. Patterson, she says, although in
a state of almost absolute destitution, retained the air of a

2 Mrs. Crosby is well and creditably known in Maine. When she was a
woman of forty and the mother of five children, financial reverses came to
her family. She learned stenography at night without a teacher and became
a court stenographer at a time when it was most unusual for a woman to
hold such a position. For fifteen years she was stenographer in the highest
courts of Maine, during which time she paid off her husband's debts, and
reared and educated her children.

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 65

grand lady which had so characterised her in her youth.
Although visiting at a farmhouse where every one had a part
in the household duties, Mrs. Patterson was always the guest
of honour, nor did it occur to any one to suggest her sharing
the daily routine. Mrs. Crosby's servants waited upon the
guest, and even her room was cared for by others. Mrs. Patter
son talked incessantly of Quimby, and often urged Mrs. Crosby
to leave her home and go out into the world with her to teach
Quimby's " Science." Mrs. Crosby admits that she was com
pletely under Mrs. Patterson's spell, and says that even after
years of estrangement and complete disillusionment, she still
feels that Mrs. Patterson was the most stimulating and in
vigorating influence she has ever known. Like all of Mrs.
Eddy's old intimates, she speaks of their days of companionship
with a certain shade of regret as if life in the society of this
woman was more intense and keen than it ever was afterward.

Mrs. Crosby says that, during this visit, both she and Mrs.
Patterson became somewhat interested in spiritualism through
communications from Mrs. Patterson's dead brother. Mrs.
Crosby is authority for the following account : 3

Mr. Crosby's farm was rather isolated, and the two women
found relief from the tedium of country life in spirit communi
cations from Mrs. Patterson's dead brother, Albert Baker.
Mrs. Patterson had been much attached to this brother, and
described his talents and personality at great length to Mrs.
Crosby, making such an attractive picture that he became a
very real person to the young woman. Albert, Mrs. Patterson

3 This account is a condensed version of Mrs. Crosby's affidavit, which takes
up the Wstory of he entire acquaintance .with Mrs Eddy, beginning when
Bho was a patient at Quimby's in 1864. This document is now in the writer s
possession.

66 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

told her, was Mrs. Crosby's guardian spirit; he had long been
trying to communicate with he*r, but had never been able to
do so until his sister came to visit her, as Mary was his " only
earthly medium." Mrs. Crosby says that she implicitly be
lieved in Albert's care and guardianship over her, that she
derived constant strength and comfort from it, and that this
spirit friendship was one of the most real she has ever known.

Albert's first communication to Mrs. Crosby occurred as
follows : 4

One day Mrs. Patterson and Mrs. Crosby sat together at
opposite sides of the same table. Suddenly Mrs. Patterson
leaned backward, shivered, closed her eyes, and began to talk
in a sepulchral, mannish voice. The voice said that " he "
was Albert Baker, Mrs. Patterson's brother. " He " had been
trying, the voice continued, to get control of Mrs. Patterson
for many days. " He " wished to warn Mrs. Crosby against
putting such entire confidence in Mrs. Patterson. " He in
formed me," Mrs. Crosby continues, " through her own lips,
that while his sister loved me as much as she was capable of
loving any one, life had been a severe experiment with her, and
she might use my sacred confidence to further any ambitious
purposes of her own." .

Mrs. Crosby was naturally amazed at this injunction. That

4 Mrs. Crosby does not assert or even imply that Mrs. Eddy was ever, in
any regular or professional sense, a " medium." Mrs. Eddy herself states that
she has been able to perform the signs and wonders of spiritualism, though
explaining them by another cause. In the second edition of Science and
Health, 1878, page 166, she says : " We are aware that the Spiritualists claim
whomsoever they would catch and regard even Christ as an elder brother.
But we never were a Spiritualist ; and never were, and never could be. and
never admitted we were a medium. We have explained to the class calling
themselves Spiritualists how their signs and wonders were wrought, and have
illustrated by doing them ; but at the same time have said, This is not the
work of spirits and I am not a medium ; and they have passed from our
presence and said, behold the proof that she is a medium !

l-acsimile of the second sheet of the first "spirit" letter from Albert Baker,
Mrs. Eddv's brother, to Mrs. Sarah Crosby

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 67

Albert should select his own sister as the medium through which
to warn Mrs. Crosby against her, seemed remarkable. Again,
if Mrs. Patterson consciously shammed, Mrs. Crosby could not
understand why she should deliver a message so uncompli
mentary to herself unless, indeed, to make the message seem
more genuine. Several times, in the course of this visit, Mrs.
Patterson went into trances. In one of these, Albert Baker's
spirit told Mrs. Crosby that if, from time to time, she would
look under the cushion of a particular chair, she would find
important written communications from him. Mrs. Crosby,
following the injunction, discovered now and then a letter.
One of these is interesting chiefly as containing Albert Baker's
spiritistic endorsement of P. P. Quimby. The text is as follows :

Sarah dear Be ye calm in reliance on self, amid all the changes of
natural yearnings, of too keen a sense of earth joys, of too -great a
struggle between the material and spiritual. Be calm or you will rend
your mortal and your experience which is needed for your spiritual
progress lost, till taken up without the proper sphere and your spirit
trials more severe.

This is why all things are working for good to those who suffer and
they must look not upon the things which are seen but upon those which
do not appear. P. Quimby of Portland has the spiritual truth of diseases.
You must imbibe it to be healed. Go to him again and lean on no
material or spiritual medium. In that path of truth I first found you.
Dear one, I am at present no aid to you although you think I am, but your
spirit will not at present bear this quickening or twill leave the body;
hence I leave you till you ripen into a condition to meet me. You will
miss me at first, but afterwards grow more tranquil because of it, which
is important that you may live for yourself and children. Love and
care for poor sister a great suffering lies before her.

After leaving Albion, Mrs. Patterson continued to receive
messages from Albert. On one occasion Mrs. Patterson sent
Mrs. Crosby the following communication from her brother:

68 LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

Child of earth! heir to immortality! love hath made intercession with
wisdom for you your request is answered.

Let not the letter leave your hand nor destroy it.

Love each other, your spirits are affined. My dear Sarah is innocent,
and will rejoice for every tear.

The gates of paradise are opening at the tread of time; glory and the
crown shall shall be the diadem of your earthly pilgrimage if you patiently
persevere in virtue, justice, and love. You twain are my care. I speak
through no other earthly medium but you.

Mr. Quimby died January 16, 1866. As in the case of many
mental healers, his own experience apparently belied his doc
trines. He had for years suffered from an abdominal tumour.
He had never had it treated medically, but asserted that he
had always been able, mentally, to prevent it from getting the
upper hand. The last few years of his life he worked inces
santly. His practice increased enormously, and at last broke
him down. In the summer of 1865 he was compelled to stop
work. He closed his Portland office and went home to Belfast
to devote the rest of his life to revising his manuscripts and
preparing them for publication. His physical condition, how
ever, prevented this; he became feebler every day. He now
acknowledged his inability to cure himself. As long as he had
his usual mental strength, he said, he could stop the disease;
but, as he felt this slipping from him, his " error " rapidly made
inroads. Finally, Quimby's wife, with his acquiescence, sum
moned a homoeopathic physician. Quimby consented to this,
he said, not because he had the slightest idea that the doctor
could help him, but merely to comfort his family. His wife
had never accepted the " theory " ; his children, for the most
part, had no enthusiasm for it. They all, however, loved the
old man dearly and could not patiently witness his suffering

HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE 69

without seeking all means to allay it. Quimby followed im
plicitly all the doctor's instructions. His son, George A.
Quimby, says : 5

An hour before he breathed his last, he said to the writer: "I am more
than ever convinced of the truth of my theory. I am perfectly willing
for the change myself, but I know you will all feel badly; but / know
that I shall be right here with you, just the same as I have always been.
I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip to
Philadelphia."

His death occurred January 16, 1866, at his residence in Belfast, at the
age of sixty-four years, and was the result of too close application to his
profession and of overwork. A more fitting epitaph could not be accorded
him than in these words:

" Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for
his friends." For, if ever a man did lay down his life for others, that
man was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby.

Many mourned Quimby's death. No one felt greater grief
or expressed it more emphatically and sincerely than Mary M.
Patterson. She wrote at once to Julius Dresser, asking him
to take up the master's work. Her letter follows:

MR. DRESSER: LYNX, February 14, 1866.

Sir: I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much-loved friend,
which perhaps you will not think overwrought in meaning: others must
of course.

I am constantly wishing that you would step forward into the place he
has vacated. I believe you would do