Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/111

Rh children, picking berries along the road, would often stop to talk to “the good sick lady” and often repeated at home or in the houses where they sold their berries what she said to them, how her blue eyes shone upon them, and how her thin hands touched their little brown ones with thrilling sympathy.

So by the love of the children a gentle rumor of saintliness was spread through that region and if Mary Baker thought upon the saintliness of her mother, some dwellers of the countryside came to think of Mrs. Patterson as a saint and to go to her for advice and comfort. Among those who sought her aid was a mother carrying her infant, a child whose eyes were badly diseased. The mother was a simple working woman, so simple that she could still believe there was a relation between piety and power. She wept as she laid her babe on Mrs. Patterson’s knees and implored her to ask God to cure its blindness.

Mrs. Patterson was touched by the woman’s faith and the child’s apparent need. She took the babe in her arms and looked into its eyes. She saw they were in such a state of inflammation that neither the pupil nor the iris was discernible. She reflected that Jesus had said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not.” “Who,” she asked herself, “has forbidden this little one, who is leading it into the way of blindness?” Mrs. Eddy has stated that she lifted her thought to God and returned the child to its mother, assuring her that God is able to keep his children. The mother looked at the child’s eyes and they were healed.