Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/334

290 Miss Julia Bartlett and Mrs. Abbie Whiting were living in the house. Alice Sibley came and went with the freedom of a daughter. Mr. Edward H. Hammond of Waltham, who later introduced Christian Science into Baltimore, Mr. Hanover P. Smith, who wrote a book of appreciation of Mrs. Eddy, and Mr. Arthur Buswell also resided there. The house was run on the cooperative plan and the residents all used the parlors for receiving patients, each having his specified office hours.

On the front door of the house was affixed a silver plate bearing the inscription, “The Massachusetts Metaphysical College,” and students soon began to overflow the parlors. They were attracted through the public services at which Mrs. Eddy usually presided, or through the accounts of her own or her students’ healings which were frequently printed in the papers of Boston. Mrs. Eddy’s class-room became the center and soul of the house. She was teaching two or three hours a day. Of the work of the college, she bore the entire burden.

So much did she pour her genius into it that when its doors were finally closed in 1889 she wrote that the college drew its breath from her and, as the reason for closing it, asked who else could sustain the institute in its vital purpose on her retirement. No one had helped her carry on the work of teaching up to this time. Asa G. Eddy, it is true, taught two terms in Lynn; Dr. E. J. Foster-Eddy taught one term in Boston, and General Erastus N. Bates taught a class just before the institute was closed. But aside from this assistance, Mrs. Eddy taught all the