Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/353

Rh sat with their eyes closed. Miss Bartlett, a very devout woman, as she sat in this silent circle, absorbed in her task, her eyes closed, her head bowed, had a habit of idly passing a side-comb again and again through her hair. Mrs. Eddy, who, when she was there, always kept an eye on the circle, on one of these occasions suddenly broke the stillness by a sarcastic remark to the effect that better work would be done if less time were spent in hair-combing and more in combating error. Miss Bartlett blushed as if she had been caught committing a mortal sin.

But Mrs. Eddy's policy of sharp rebuke proved to be a wise one. On the whole her students liked it, and on the whole they needed it. Her business assistants and practitioners were, most of them, young men whose years had need of direction. In the nature of the case, they were generally young men without a strong purpose and without very definite aims and ambitions. Whether it was that Mrs. Eddy did not want men of determination about her, or whether such men were not drawn to her and her college, the fact remains that most of the men then in her service were of the eminently biddable sort. Some of them, before they came into Christian Science, had tried other vocations and had not been successful. Mrs. Eddy drew young men of this type about her, not only because she could offer them a good living, but because she was able to give them an impetus, to charge them with energy and endow them with a certain effectiveness which they did not have of themselves. Loyal Christian Scientists point to this or that man who once worked