Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/387

Rh Wiggin was present in the audience, and after the service the huge man made his way up to the rostrum, where Mrs. Eddy was surrounded by a crowd of delighted women. When Mrs. Eddy saw him, her eyes began to twinkle, and, putting her hand to her lips, she shot him a stage whisper: "How did it go?"

When Mr. Wiggin persuaded her to omit the libellous portion of the chapter on Mesmerism from the 1886 edition of Science and Health after the plates for the edition had been made, Mrs. Eddy, at Mr. Wiggin's suggestion, cut this sermon to the required length and, by inserting it, was able to send the book to press without renumbering the remaining pages. The chapter was called "Wayside Hints (Supplementary)," and Mrs. Eddy put her seal upon it by inserting, under the subject of "squareness," a tribute to her deceased husband: "We need good square men everywhere. Such a man was my late husband, Dr. Asa G. Eddy."

By the year 1890 Mrs. Eddy had begun to lose patience with Mr. Wiggin and to charge him with not taking his work seriously enough. In a letter to her publisher, Mr. William G. Nixon, she complains that Mr. Wiggin's proof corrections have a "most shocking flippancy," and the exasperation of her letter seems to indicate that the worthy gentleman had grown tired of assisting revelation:

&emsp; Aug. 28, 1890.

The proofs which I received Aug. 27th, and returned to printer Aug. 28th, are somewhere. I had not changed the marginal references in the copy because I had before written to Mr. Wiggin to make fewer notations and