Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/173

Rh differently, might have taken her back into animal magnetism and the confusion of hypnotism.

In the letter she describes her accident and says that the physician attending her had said that she had taken the last step she ever would, yet in three days she had gotten up from her bed and would walk. She says “I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly. Now can’t you help me? I believe you can. I think I could help another in my condition.”

To this request the former patient replied that he did not know how Quimby had performed his cures and doubted if any one did. He distinctly declined the task of reviving Quimbyism or attempting to stand in the shoes of the mesmerist. So there was a closed door against that refuge from her own responsibility, a refuge which had presented itself to her mind as a last temptation. Quimby was dead; Quimbyism had perished with him. No one remained of those who had gathered round him in life to perpetuate his peculiar influence. Her fall had destroyed the very work she had so long credited him with. Everything must begin anew for her; life must be made completely over. She was forced to turn to God.

Her whole environment was about to be changed, for she was to be left without family and with the barest means of subsistence. Her faith faltered, her limbs trembled, but backward she could not go. It dawned upon her more and more insistently that