Page:The Cambridge History of American Literature, v4.djvu/113

 Science and Health 525 When Mrs. Eddy, then Mrs. Patterson, climbed the stairs to Quimby's office on October, 1862, she was "a frail shadow of a woman." Three weeks later, in her forty-second year, well in mind and body, she went on her way rejoicing. Though the general idea one finds in Science and HeaJth may have come vaguely to her long before — ^for as in all such cases faith makes the patient whole — ^it was now to grow slowly but steadily into that completeness which today makes it effective in the lives of many. Precisely how much the book owes to Quimby we shall never know. To one who has seen his writings ante- dating Mrs. Eddy's visit there is no question as to his use also of outstanding phrases like "Christian Science" and "Science of Health," more familiar as the title Science and Health of the famous book. In the years that followed her visit, which amounted in the circumstances to a real discovery, since she made the idea Quimby expressed in his own way with much success her own, she often said outright that she learned from him. Many who knew her in the later sixties told years ago the same story of Mrs. Eddy sounding Quimby's praises till some grew weary of his name. One person is on record to the effect that Mrs. Eddy's exact words were: "I learned this from Dr. Quimby, and he made me promise to teach it to at least two persons before I die." ' In the earlier writings of Mrs. Eddy — not in late editions of Science and Health — terms abound which seem to indicate that many of Quimby's words and phrases were taken over, almost as he coined them, from his teachings to remain as testimony at least to her earlier sense of obligation to the man who brought also the very pages of Science and Health used between 1885 and 1890 by Mrs. Eddy's literary helper with the criticisms and suggestions made in his own hand- writing, and he also read the first edition published in 1875 of Science and Health, which few in recent years seem to have seen because of its scarcity. To this were added in 1906 and 1907 personal visits to, and correspondence with, many, then aged, who had known Mrs. Eddy in her formative period and who when seen re- tained clear recollections of her unusual personality. For such reasons, with in- dulgence of the editors, the chapter departs somewhat from the conventional course of literary criticism. L. P. P. ' It is proper, however, to observe that her followers beUeve that the discovery of God as Principle, immanent and available to meet human need, came to Mrs. Eddy when, suffering from a serious accident, she turned to the Scriptures for solace and was healed through the spiritual revelation of Truth which she after- wards gave to the world in her text book.