Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/381

Rh returned to her mind as an argument for its selection as an abiding place. But she would not again make a hasty decision or permit others to do so for her in so important a matter as a permanent home. So she decided to live for a time in a furnished house in Concord and look about her for the desirable home.

It was in the spring of 1889 that she retired to Concord, carrying out her purpose of withdrawal from the personal direction of the students in Boston. In Concord she resided at 62 North State street for a few months. While living there she took her daily drives in and around the little New Hampshire capital, so dear to her because of her earliest recollections of childhood. From one of those drives she returned by the road (now, through her gift to the city, a macadamized avenue) which stretches along the crest of a valley to the Southwest from the city. Halting her carriage about three quarters of a mile outside the capital, she looked out over the valley in contemplation. Mrs. Eddy saw here the vision of a home remote and yet accessible. She saw Bow, her birthplace, nestling in the ridge of blue hills away to the East and she discerned the hazy outline of Monadnock, far to the Southwest, rearing its august and lonely head. Below the pleasant upland upon which she stood lay all the broad valley, like the Valley of Decision, which her years had spanned, and doubtless she saw with the eloquent prophet of old “multitudes, multitudes in that Valley of Decision.”

What Mrs. Eddy beheld in vision she brought to