Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/386

334 his youth. His conversation was rich in anecdote and humour, and he belonged to the day when literary quotations were introduced unblushingly into friendly talk. Indeed, Mr. Wiggin had his Shakespeare so well upon his tongue that he could illuminate almost any question with a Shakespearean quotation. He once wrote an account of how he heard Liszt, then a newly made abbé, play at a sacred concert in Rome, and managed—quite unconsciously, it would seem—to describe pretty much the whole affair in language from Macbeth. An extraordinary man, certainly, to be concerned in the shaping of Science and Health. Mr. Wiggin himself never got over the humour of it.

It must not be supposed that he took his task lightly enough to slight it. He was accustomed to do his hack work well, and it became with him a genuine concern, as he often said, "to keep Mrs. Eddy from making herself ridiculous." He was glad to talk theology to any one, and he doubtless enjoyed teaching a little to Mrs. Eddy. He used to tell, with enormous glee, how Mrs. Eddy would sometimes receive his suggestions by slyly remarking, "Mr. Wiggin, do you know, I sometimes believe God speaks to me through you." It was when his venerable patroness laughed that he liked her best, and with him she sometimes enjoyed a joke in a pleasant and human fashion. Among other services which he rendered her, Mr. Wiggin once drew up for Mrs. Eddy the outline of a sermon upon the "city that lieth foursquare," described in Revelation. She delivered the sermon before her congregation January 24, 1886, with great success, though the Journal, in reporting the occasion, says that the Rev. Mrs. Eddy laboured under some disadvantage, as she had left her manuscript at home. Mr.