Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/138

104 In a letter to Mr. A. J. Swartz, a mental healer of Chicago who interested himself in the case, dated February 22, 1838, George A. Quimby explained his position:

Your letter with enclosure at hand. I judge that you offer to defend the memory of my father, the late P. P. Quimby. . . . Please permit me to say that I have no doubt of your kind intention to come to the rescue of my father, but I do not feel that there is the slightest necessity for it. . . . If I were in prison, in solitary confinement for life, I should be too busy to get into any kind of a discussion with Mrs. Eddy.

I have my father's manuscripts in my possession, but will not allow them to be copied nor to go out of my hands. Answering your further inquiries, I have no written article of Mrs. Eddy's in my possession, have never had, nor did my father ever have, nor did she ever leave any with either of us. Neither of us have ever "stolen" any of her writings nor anything else. In fact, we both have been able to make a living without stealing. . ..

From the history of this controversy, it is evident that, for Mrs. Eddy, there have existed two Phineas P. Quimbys: one the Quimby who was her physician and teacher, who roused her from the fretful discontent of middle-age, and who gave her purpose and aspiration; the other the Quimby who, after the publication of Science and Health, became, in a sense, her rival,—whom she saw as an antagonist threatening to invalidate her claims. If she has been a loser through this controversy, it is not because of what she borrowed from Quimby, but because of her later unwillingness to admit her obligation to him. Had she observed the etiquette of the regular sciences, where personal ambition is subsidiary to a desire for truth, and where discoverers and investigators are scrupulous to acknowledge the sources from which they have obtained help, it would have strengthened rather than weakened her position.