Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/292

250 had been limited, he had an active mind. He read a great deal, was restless, eager, and ambitious. When he be came a student of Mrs. Eddy's, he gave up his cabinet business and, naturally hot-headed and impulsive, he threw himself into metaphysical healing with great enthusiasm. He came to Mrs. Eddy's succour in a critical hour, when she desperately needed a man who could devote himself effectively to her cause. Mr. Eddy had never been a man of much initiative, and his terror of mesmerism had cowed him beyond his natural docility.

By this time Mrs. Eddy's hatred for Mr. Spofford had reached the acute stage, where it kept her walking the floor at night, declaring that Spofford's mind was pursuing and bullying hers, and that she could not shake it off. Mr. Eddy, a helpless spectator of his wife's misery, used to declare that the man ought to be punished for persecuting her, and believed that Mr. Spofford's mind was on their track night and day, seeking to break down Mrs. Eddy's health, to get their property away from them, and to overthrow the movement. Mr. Spofford, on the other hand, was scarcely less distraught. He still believed that Mrs. Eddy had brought him the great truth of his life, and that, however unworthy, she had a divine message. He felt his separation from her deeply, and was amazed and terrified by her vindictiveness. He feared that Mrs. Eddy would not stop until she had entirely destroyed his practice, and he never knew what weapon she would use against him next. Only a state of panic on both sides can explain the developments of the autumn of 1878.

One morning early in October a heavy-set, rather brutal-looking man knocked at the door of Mr. Spofford's Boston