Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/480

422 discredited with the Philadelphia following by letters from Boston. It was his mother's way not to tell him frankly that she was through with him, though, after he reached his destination, she dropped the old endearing appellations, and no longer signed herself "Mother," but wrote to him in the following tone:

, I have silenced every word of the slander started in Boston about that woman by saying that I had not the, least idea of any wrong conduct between you and her, for I know you are chaste. . . . This silly stuff is dead. Always kindly yours. &emsp;

Dr. Foster left Boston by water, and on the day he sailed away Mrs. Eddy sent flowers to the boat, and a crowd of Christian Scientists were at the wharf to see him off. But as the adopted son stood by the deck-rail with his bouquet in his hands, and watched the water widen between him and Boston, he realised the import of this cordiality, and knew that, through the crowd on the shore, his mother had waved him a blithe and long adieu.

After Dr. Foster reached Philadelphia and found that Christian Scientists there had been warned to have nothing to do with him, he went back to Concord to lay his wrongs before Mrs. Eddy. She granted him an audience in the house in which, a few months before, he had been master, but cut short the interview and went upstairs while he was speaking. After this interview Mrs. Eddy wrote Dr. Foster the following letter, in which she accuses him of "keeping his mind on her" and weakening her, as she used to charge Spofford and Arens with doing: Dr. Foster