Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/354

310 Mr. Wiggin was a prominent figure in Boston literary circles during the eighties and nineties. He was a retired Unitarian clergyman and for a time an editor for the University Press. While he was, in a sense, a man of the world, that is to say, a social fraternizer with the literary, musical, and artistic Bohemia of two continents, — for he traveled somewhat in Europe, — he was a man of character and enjoyed the friendship of men highly esteemed. John Wilson and Edward Everett Hale were his friends.

It is difficult to understand why after he passed to another world the claim was made in his name that he practically rewrote “Science and Health.” Mr. Wiggin himself never made such a claim in any writings which he left, and it may be sincerely doubted if he would have considered it honorable to strike so vitally at the integrity of any writer for whom he had worked as to cast a doubt upon the product of his mind. To even make the claim of polishing and giving style to a writer’s expression is, as it were, to assert that he has something to say and does not know how to say it. The fact that Mrs. Eddy’s book had gone through fifteen editions before Mr. Wiggin came on the scene proved that she both had something to say and knew how to say it.

Mr. Wiggin used the pseudonym Phare Pleigh in writing for The Christian Science Journal, and it is doubtful if Mr. Wiggin would think it fair play to print his personal letters after his death. He was a friend of Mrs. Eddy, though never a convert to Christian Science, and being a man of the world, he