Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/367

Rh Nixon, tried to persuade Mrs. Eddy to omit a detailed list of her Christmas offerings, and she wrote him:

I requested you through Mr. Frye to reinstate my notice of my Christmas gifts, for the reasons I herein name.

Students are constantly telling me how they felt the mental impression this year to make me no present, and when they overcame it were strengthened and blessed. For this reason—viz., to discourage mental malpractice and to encourage those who beat it—I want that notice published.

Many of Mrs. Eddy's contributions to the Journal have been collected and reprinted in the volume known as Miscellaneous Writings. While even in the very latest edition of Science and Health the flavour of Mrs. Eddy lingers on every page, like a dominating strain of blood that cannot be bred out, the book has been rearranged and retouched by so many hands that the personal element has been greatly moderated. In the old files of the Journal, however, we seem to get Mrs. Eddy with singular directness and to come into very intimate contact with her. When she is angry one can fairly hear the voice behind the type, and when she bestows royal favours one can see the smile at the other end of the copy. These contributions were usually written in precipitate haste, and reached the despairing printer at the last possible moment, almost unintelligible, full of inaccuracies and errors, and, except for an occasional period, innocent of all punctuation. The copy-reader or assistant editor did what he could at editing it as he fed it to the compositors—and the point is that he did not do too much. In the columns of the Journal one gets Mrs. Eddy's pages hot from her hand, as if they had not been touched since the copyboy dashed with them out of the door of 571 Columbus Avenue. In her editorial function she is more