Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/421



ETURNING to Boston in her eighty-seventh year to take up her residence at Chestnut Hill, Mrs. Eddy caused the world to wonder what she could have in mind to accomplish by this change of base for her household. The average commenter regarded the move as hazardous for one of her advanced years and believed that she could find no contentment in a new home after her long residence in Concord. But such commenters were basing their judgment on the facts of an ordinary life. An ordinary life has ceased to be concerned with the affairs of this world after entering the eighties and is willing to drift quietly with the tide. But Mrs. Eddy had purposes as yet unrevealed to the world, among which was one great purpose, a purpose cherished for twenty-five years, namely, the establishment of a daily newspaper.

The germ of this enterprise lay in the seed that was planted in 1883 in the first issue of the eight-page paper, at first sent out only once every two months, the paper called The Journal of Christian Science, for twenty years whose early fortunes have been traced in the chapter dealing with foundation work in Boston. During this time the Christian