Page:The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany.djvu/339

Rh I will relate the following incident, which occurred later in life, as illustrative of my disposition: —

While I was living with Dr. Patterson at his country home in North Groton, N. H., a girl, totally blind, knocked at the door and was admitted. She begged to be allowed to remain with me, and my tenderness and sympathy were such that I could not refuse her. Shortly after, however, my good housekeeper said to me: “If this blind girl stays with you, I shall have to leave; she troubles me so much.” It was not in my heart to turn the blind girl out, and so I lost my housekeeper.

My reply to the statement that the clerk's book shows that I joined the Tilton Congregational Church at the age of seventeen is that my religious experience seemed to culminate at twelve years of age. Hence a mistake may have occurred as to the exact date of my first church membership.

The facts regarding the McNeil coat-of-arms are as follows: —

Fanny McNeil, President Pierce's niece, afterwards Mrs. Judge Potter, presented me my coat-of-arms, saying that it was taken in connection with her own family coat-of-arms. I never doubted the veracity of her gift. I have another coat-of-arms, which is of my mother's ancestry. When I was last in Washington, D. C., Mrs. Judge Potter and myself knelt in silent prayer on the mound of her late father. General John McNeil, the hero of Lundy Lane.

Notwithstanding that McClure's Magazine says, “Mary Baker completed her education when she finished Smith's grammar and reached long division in arithmetic,” I was called by the Rev. R. S. Rust, D.D., Principal of the