Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/215

Rh Science. Mrs. Glover became aware of this jealousy and was greatly distressed by it. She felt that her students were leaning on her too heavily, and that by demanding her attention and even by thinking about her so constantly, they drained her powers and unfitted her for her work. She spoke much in these days of a temperamental quality which compelled her to take on the ills and perplexities of her friends and to suffer from them as if they were her own. She continually besought her students not to "call upon her" in thought when they were sick or in trouble. For some months before her marriage to Gilbert Eddy she seems to have felt completely at the mercy of her students' minds, and that she must find some way to put a barrier between their thoughts and her own. An almost incoherent letter, written to Daniel Spofford two days before her marriage, indicates great mental distress, and she evidently felt that her favouritism toward Eddy had been the subject of criticism.

"Now, Dr. Spofford," she writes, "won't you exercise reason and let me live or will you kill me? Your mind is just what has brought on my relapse and I shall never recover if you do not govern yourself and wholly away from me. Do for God's sake and the work I have before me let me get out of this suffering I never was worse than last night and you say you wish to do me good and I do not doubt it. Then won't you quit thinking of me. I shall write no more to a male student and never more trust one to live with. It is a hidden foe that is at work read Science and Health page 193, 1st paragraph.

"No nor mortal has tried to have you leave me