Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/42

18 and the latter I had to repeat every Sunday." Mrs. Eddy has also said that she "graduated from Dyer H. Sanborn's Academy at Tilton." But at present she makes no pretension to such scholarly attainments. "After my discovery of Christian Science," she says, "most of the knowledge I had gleaned from schoolbooks vanished like a dream." Only Lindley Murray remained, and he in an apotheosized state. "Learning was so illumined," she writes, "that grammar was eclipsed. Etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of God in man's origin and signification. Syntax was spiritual order and unity. Prosody, the song of angels, and no earthly or inglorious theme."

Mrs. Eddy's schoolmates are not able to reconcile her story with their own recollections. They declare frankly that they do not believe Albert Baker taught her Hebrew, Greek, and Latin. He entered college when Mary was nine, and left home when she was thirteen. There were, they say, no graduations from Dyer H. Sanborn's Academy, for the girls and boys left school when they were old enough to go to work or to marry. They insist that Mary's education was finished when she reached long division in the district school.

At church, too, Mary made a vivid impression. Like the rest of Mark Baker's family, she attended service regularly; and she took pains with her costume, and the timing of her arrival, so that members of the congregation have retained a distinct picture of Mary Baker as she appeared at church. She always made a ceremonious entrance, coming up the aisle after the rest of the congregation were seated, and attracting the general attention by her pretty clothes and ostentatious manner. No trace of early piety can be found in a first-hand