Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/328

282 medical institutions chartered under this act were prohibited from conferring degrees. The purpose of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, as stated in the articles of agreement, was: "To teach pathology, ontology, therapeutics, moral science, metaphysics, and their application to the treatment of diseases." The signers to the articles of agreement were: Mary B. G. Eddy, president; James C. Howard, treasurer; Charles J. Eastman, M.D., Edgar F. Woodbury, James Wiley, William F. Walker, and Samuel P. Bancroft, directors; all students of Mrs. Eddy's except Charles J. Eastman, who had been a pupil in the little "dame's school" which Mrs. Eddy taught at Tilton for a few months during her first widowhood, and who at this time had a doubtful medical practice in Boston.

The name "Massachusetts Metaphysical College" is some what misleading. During the nine years of its existence this institution never had a building of its own, or any other seat than Mrs. Eddy's parlour, and, with very incidental exceptions, Mrs. Eddy herself, during all this time, constituted the entire faculty. In short, the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, subsequently of such wide fame among Christian Scientists, was simply Mrs. Eddy, and its seat was wherever she happened to be. To call it an institution was a very literal application of the boast of the old Williams alumni that Mark Hopkins on one end of a saw-log and a student on the other would make a college.

The organisation of the college in 1881 in no way changed Mrs. Eddy's manner of instruction. Her new letter-heads,