Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/348

300 since her young womanhood, and which she still read regularly every week. In earlier times Mrs. Eddy had been very fond of Mrs. Southworth's novels, but now she discouraged the reading of fiction, and Science and Health was the only book she kept in her room. When she lectured before her classes, Mrs. Eddy usually had a vase of flowers upon the table at her side, and, to illustrate the non-existence of matter, she often explained that there were really no flowers there at all, and that the bouquet was merely a belief of mortal mind. She was fond of flowers in spite of the fact that she had always been totally without a sense of smell—she used, indeed, to tell her students that the absence of a physical sense meant a gain in spirituality.

There was singularly little social intercourse among the students who resided at the college. Mrs. Eddy was no idler, and she found plenty of work for all her assistants. Occasionally, in the evening, a fire was lighted in the parlour downstairs, and she joined her students for an hour or two; but this did not occur often. The two memorable festivities of the Christian Scientists in the early '80's were the reception which Mrs. Clara E. Choate gave for Mrs. Eddy upon the latter's return from a visit to Washington, April 5, 1882, and the picnic at Point of Pines, July 16, 1885, which commemorated the ninth anniversary of the founding of the Christian Science Association, and was also Mrs. Eddy's sixty-fourth birthday. At this picnic E. H. Harris, a dentist, and a new protégé of Mrs. Eddy's, gave a talk in which he mentioned the advantages of Christian Science in the practice of dentistry; Mrs. Augusta Stetson, who had recently come into the Association, and who