Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 56.djvu/187

Rh An ignorant hackman took her over to the suburban village of Cambridge, which is the seat of Harvard College. Making inquiry of the professors there, she found none who had ever heard of the University of Mentiphysics, having eyes and ears for nothing but Harvard, which in some respects is indeed a great institution, but on a material plane.

At last, after much inquiry, Doctress Jones was sent to the Neministic Headquarters, a small building on the corner of Milk and Transcendental Streets. Here she learned, from a little lady with a withered face and a serene smile, that the University of Mentiphysics was situated not in Boston, but in the neighboring town of Lynn, which lies some miles to the north. "But in Massachusetts," she said, "we call it all Boston."

"So I took the train for Lynn," Miss Doctress Jones continued, "and drove at once to the street and number named on the card. The little white house with green blinds, white columns on the veranda, and a few weedy roses in the front yard did not fill my conception of a university, for it did not look like our universities in California. But the fault was with my conception, not with the fact.

"The maid who answered the bell assured me that this was indeed the university, and ushered me at once into the office of the president. The wall was covered with pictures and photographs, showing elderly ladies with serene smiling faces. Under each one were the letters N. N. N., and a card giving an account of how each one had been made whole and happy through Neministic Science. The president was a middle-aged, matronly lady, with a high forehead and brown hair, streaked with gray, done in graceful frizzes over her brow. Above the corners of her mouth, which were always drawn up in an engaging smile, were three deep creases. Mr. Gridley, our schoolmaster, tells me that these correspond to the grave accent in Greek, and that there being three of them shows that the lady had been married three times. I do not know as to this, but somehow her face seemed startlingly familiar and at the same time strangely pleasant.

"I murmured something about having had the pleasure before. She said, taking the words from my mouth: 'I know what you are going to say. We are indeed very much alike, though she is on the material plane. Still, my friends call me the "Lydia Pinkham of the soul," and I do not resent it, for what dear Lydia tries to do, that I do.'

"I told the president," Doctress Jones continued, "that I wished to learn the wisdom of Boston, and especially the science of Neministic Healing, of which I had heard much in Alcalde. 'But