Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/360

316 Commonwealth avenue. This was the first house she had owned since the Broad street house in Lynn, for she leased the college building at a rental of one thousand dollars annually. Her new home was on the outskirts of Boston, overlooking from the rear in those days the Charles River and fronting on a boulevard parkway where stands to-day the superb Anne Whitney statue of Lief Ericsson. The house included twenty beautiful rooms. It was fitted up suitably, though not extravagantly and Mrs. Eddy established herself here with her secretary and her companion. Her life was fixed by a very punctilious order; she wrote at certain hours, received at certain hours, attended the college to teach her classes, and began to take the daily drive which was to be the only recreation she insisted upon from that time until her earthly departure.

The West was calling for her again. Letters which poured in told her that she must go out to the field once more. The National Christian Scientist Association was to meet in Chicago in 1888, and Mrs. Eddy determined to deal with all her students’ needs and wants at that focal point and meet them for the purpose of satisfying their insistent claims upon her attention. In order that the occasion might be a gratifying one to the entire field, and that the church might be renewed and refreshed for its pioneer work, Mrs. Eddy issued a call for this convention which was printed in the Journal for May. She said:

Christian Scientists: For Christ’s and for humanity’s sake, gather together, meet en masse, at the annual session of the National Christian Science