Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/325

Rh bereavement, so calm that she in every way conformed to the usages and standards of the world, and yet bore herself with the composure of one acting in sublime faith. As there had been unwarranted rumors concerning Mr. Eddy’s illness and death, she had permitted an autopsy. That grim function completed and the verdict of heart failure rendered, Mrs. Eddy summoned such friends and students as she could rely upon. Mr. Eddy’s interment was lovingly arranged for and carried out and her tribute to his life and work was pronounced for her in a public service. She then took steps to withdraw from active work through the summer and rearranged her plans for a campaign of several years, looking to the establishment of the church on a firm foundation.

Before leaving Boston for a summer’s rest, a period which the world would call a time of mourning, but which to Mrs. Eddy was a spiritual retreat for the restatement in her consciousness of the deep things of love and truth and immortality, she gathered together her students and gave to each his work. She received representatives from the press and granted an interview in which she refuted the popular notion that consternation had seized her with the swing of death’s pinion. She declared with superb affirmation, “I believe in God’s supremacy over error, and this gives me peace.”

Mr. Arthur True Buswell, the student whom Mrs. Eddy had sent to Cincinnati to teach and practise, came to her house in Columbus avenue, summoned by telegram to join in an advisory council. He suggested that she make use of his home in Barton, in