Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/348

304 Iowa, Nebraska, New York, The District of Columbia, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, Missouri, and Kentucky.

This inspiring growth of adherents in all parts of the country did not result instantaneously or miraculously from Mrs. Eddy’s visit to Chicago, but grew with a healthy, sturdy activity during the four years intervening between the spring of 1884 and 1888. Mrs. Eddy was meantime faithfully pursuing her work at the college on Columbus avenue. Her house became the center of much interest and was for several years a very notable residence in Boston. It was substantial without being pretentious, its arrangement was typical of modern city residences and Mrs. Eddy relaxed somewhat the rigid order of its furnishings as the months flew by and her financial resources were more abundant and secure. On the first floor was a suite of parlors continuous with a small reception-room. These rooms could all be thrown together by opening sliding doors, and this was done on Thursday nights when the curious Boston literary folk came to hear the new doctrine. For, had they not read what Bronson Alcott said of this new teacher of metaphysics, and was not Bronson Alcott a prophet to be heeded?

So it became a common question in the drawing-rooms of the eighties, “Have you met Mrs. Eddy,