Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/116

78 and that she wished to come to him to study and be healed.

She now began to make preparation to visit Quimby. She requested her sister to come to her aid and her sister responded. She rose from her sick bed and started on the journey though she accomplished it by a somewhat circuitous route. Mrs. Patterson dismissed with love her blind servant so long faithful. Her household goods were packed up and sent to Tilton and she returned with Abigail to her home. On the way to Tilton she explained to her sister her wish to visit Phineas P. Quimby; but Abigail demurred. She said Quimby was a mesmerist and Spiritualist, a quack scientist who had traveled around New England with a youth giving exhibitions in hypnotism.

“Why, Mary,” she said, “how can you desire to visit such a charlatan, — you with your mind, your talents, your religion, you who have always resisted these doctrines of animal magnetism and the professions of Spiritualism?”

“I certainly do not want mesmerism or Spiritualism,” said Mary, “but I somehow believe that I must see what this man has or has not. I am impelled with an unquenchable thirst for God that will not let me rest. Abigail, there is a science beyond all sciences we have ever studied. It is Christ’s Science. There is a fundamental doctrine, a God’s truth that will restore me to health, and if me, then countless thousands. Has this man Quimby discovered the great truth or is he a blunderer, perhaps a charlatan as you say? I must know.”