Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/265

Rh and diamonds. Concerning the tuition fee for class instruction Mrs. Eddy has written in “Retrospection and Introspection”:

When God impelled me to set a price on my instruction in Christian Science Mind-healing, I could think of no financial equivalent for an impartation of a knowledge of that divine power which heals; but I was led to name three hundred dollars as the price for each pupil in one course of lessons at my college, — a startling sum for tuition lasting barely three weeks. This amount greatly troubled me. I shrank from asking it, but was finally led, by a strange providence, to accept this fee. God has since shown me, in multitudinous ways, the wisdom of this decision; and I beg disinterested people to ask my loyal students if they consider three hundred dollars any real equivalent for my instruction during twelve half-days, or even in half as many lessons. Nevertheless, my list of indigent charity scholars is very large, and I have had as many as seventeen in one class.

Among the students in the first class held in Broad street was Daniel H. Spofford, a man who figured largely in the events of the next few years. He came from New Hampshire, and as a youth had lived in Eastern Massachusetts, working as a chore boy on farms and later as a watchmaker’s apprentice until he entered the army at the age of nineteen. He served through the Civil War and when he was mustered out returned to Lynn and entered the shoe-shops. He first met Mrs. Glover in South Common street. He did not enter her class there,