Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/518

458 statement to the assessors at Concord that the value of her taxable property amounted to about $19,000. This statement was sworn to year after year by Mr. Frye.

About a month after Mr. Glover's suit was withdrawn, Mrs. Eddy purchased, through Robert Walker, a Christian Scientist real-estate agent in Chicago, the old Lawrence mansion in Newton, a suburb of Boston. The house was remodelled and enlarged in great haste and at a cost which must almost have equalled the original purchase price, $100,000. All the arrangements were conducted with secrecy, and very few Christian Scientists knew that it was Mrs. Eddy's intention to occupy this house until she was there in person.

On Sunday, January 26, 1908, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs. Eddy, attended by nearly a score of her followers, boarded a special train at Concord. Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent accidents. A pilot-engine preceded the locomotive which drew Mrs. Eddy's special train, and the train was followed by a third engine to prevent the possibility of a rear-end collision. Dr. Alpheus B. Merrill, a second cousin of Mrs. Eddy and a practising physician of Concord, was of her party. Mrs. Eddy's face was heavily veiled when she took the train at Concord and when she alighted at Chestnut Hill station. Her carriage arrived at the Lawrence house late in the afternoon, and she was lifted out and carried into the house by one of her male attendants.

Mrs. Eddy's new residence is a fine old stone mansion which has been enlarged without injury to its original dignity. The grounds cover an area of about twelve acres and are well wooded. The house now contains about twenty-five rooms.