Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/469

Rh usually walked about the fish-pond or paced the back veranda. She invariably took a nap before dinner, which she had in the middle of the day. Promptly at two o'clock she started upon her daily drive. Mr. Frye still acted as her secretary and companion, and Martha Morgan attended largely to the housekeeping. Later Mrs. Eddy sent for Miss Kate Shannon, a music-teacher in Montreal; for Mrs. Laura Sargent, who is still in attendance upon her, and for Mrs. Pamelia Leonard, who died at her home in Brooklyn, January 8, 1908, under the care of a physician.

All the members of her household lived as if they were exactly as old and as much enfeebled as Mrs. Eddy. They rose early, retired early; never went out of the house except upon her commissions; never dined out, received visits, or went to Boston for a holiday. And why should they, when they believed that the most important things that had happened in the world for at least eighteen hundred years were daily going on at Pleasant View? They had built their hope upon the fundamental proposition that Mrs. Eddy was the inspired revelator of God; that, as the Journal expressed it, she had retired to Pleasant View to "commune always with God in the mount." To be in the house with Mrs. Eddy was the ultimate experience, and it left them nothing more to wish for. Mrs. Eddy filled their lives. Her breakfast, her nap, her correspondence, her visitors, her clothes, even, were matters of the greatest importance. Her faithful women especially delighted in dressing her hair,