Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/473

Rh stories he wrote down was that which Mrs. Eddy often used to tell her household concerning the state of ecstasy in which her own mother lived before Mrs. Eddy's birth. Mrs. Baker, so the legend went, felt as if all the vital forces of the world had united in her, and she knew that she was to bring forth a prodigy. This story, of course, does not agree with the one which Mrs. Eddy used to tell her early students in Lynn, of how she had been born into the world an unwelcome child, and how every man's hand had been against her, etc.

Although Mrs. Eddy was now a wealthy woman, she was still prudent in the use of her money. Her home at Pleasant View was comfortable but not luxurious. There was nothing ostentatious about her manner of living, and she never spent money lavishly, even upon herself. Her laces and jewels, even the diamond cross which is conspicuous in many of her photo graphs, were given to her by devoted students. The writer has an amusing letter in which Mrs. Eddy thanks one of her students for a piano, referring to the instrument as a "memento."

Mrs. Eddy's little economies are always interesting and characteristic. On one occasion she summoned Dr. Foster's old friend, William Clark of Barre, Vt., to come to Pleasant View as gardener. She wearied of Clark in a little while, decided that he ought to be a teacher of Christian Science instead of a gardener, and sent him away. While Clark had worked on her place Mrs. Eddy had paid him gardener's wages, but she felt that he ought to be reimbursed for the expense he had incurred in moving to Concord and in quitting his former occupation. Accordingly, she called Dr. Foster into her study