Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/76

48 any drug, Quimby declared, which could put the patient in this attitude of mental receptivity and give his own mind a chance to work upon the disease, would accomplish the same result. He made this discovery the basis of an elaborate and original system of mind cure; he dropped mesmerism, dismissed Burkmar, and began to work out his theory. He experimented for several years in Belfast, and, in 1859, opened an office in Portland.

Quimby had the necessary mental and moral qualifications for his work. His personality inspired love and confidence, and his patients even now affectionately recall his kind-heartedness, his benevolence, and his keen perception. Even his opponents in the controversy which has raged over his work and that of Mrs. Eddy, speak well of him. "On his rare humanity and sympathy," says Mrs. Eddy, "one could write a sonnet."

He was a small man, both in stature and in build, quick, sensitive, and nervous in his movements. His large, well-formed head stood straight on erect, energetic shoulders. He had a high, broad forehead, and silken white hair and beard. His eyes, arched with heavy brows, black, deep-set, and penetrating, seemed, as one of his patients has written, "to see all through the falsities of life and far into the depths and into the spirit of things." At times his eyes flashed with good nature and wit, for Quimby by no means lacked the jovial virtues. If his countenance suggested one quality more than another, it was honesty; whatever the public thought of his ideas, no one who ever saw him face to face doubted the man's absolute sincerity. He demanded the same sympathy which he himself gave. He dealt kindly with honest doubters, but