Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/298

256 peremptory dismissal of the case, but remained active in the defense of her husband’s honor, until every charge was privately examined and affidavits secured covering every point. In these affidavits she was singularly fortunate in receiving the confession of the accomplice Collier which promised to clear up the entire matter had the nolle prosse not been entered. Shortly after the police court hearing, this man wrote the following badly spelled letter now among Mrs. Eddy’s bequeathed papers.

To Dr. Asa G. Eddy and E. J. Arens, — Feeling that you have been greatly ingured by faulse charges and knowing thair is no truth in my statements that you attempted to hire Sargeant to kill Daniel Spofford, and wishing to retract as far as possible all things I have sed to your ingury, I now say that thair is no truth whatever in the statement that I saw you meet Sargeant at East Cambridge or any other place and pay or offer to pay him any money; that I never herd a conversation between you and Sargeant as testified to by me. Whether Daniel Spofford has anything to do with Sargeant I do not know. All I know is that the story I told on the stand is holy faulse and was got up by Sargeant.

This letter led Mrs. Eddy to inquire out the man Collier and persuade him to make an affidavit before a justice in Taunton, December 17, 1878. His sworn statement is as follows:

I, George A. Collier, do on oath depose and say of my own free will, and in order to expose the man who has tried to injure Dr. Asa G. Eddy and Ed-