Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/87

Rh Mrs. Patterson almost immediately informed Quimby that she was very poor, and asked his assistance in getting an inexpensive boarding-place. Quimby, by personal intercession, obtained a room for her at reduced rates in Chestnut Street. According to George A. Quimby, Quimby's son and secretary, Mrs. Patterson's first stay in Portland lasted about three weeks. As far as her health was concerned the visit seemed a complete success. Under Quimby's treatment the spinal trouble disappeared and Mrs. Patterson left his office a well woman. But this hardly-achieved visit to Portland meant much more to her than that. For the first time in her life she felt an absorbing interest. Her contact with Quimby and her inquiry into his philosophy seem to have been her first great experience, the first powerful stimulus in a life of unrestraint, disappointment, and failure. Her girlhood had been a fruitless, hysterical revolt against order and discipline. The dulness and meagreness of her life had driven her to strange extravagances in conduct. Neither of her marriages had been happy. Maternity had not softened her nor brought her consolations. Up to this time her masterful will and great force of personality had served to no happy end. Her mind was turned in upon itself; she had been absorbed in ills which seem to have been largely the result of her own violent nature—lacking any adequate outlet, and, like disordered machinery, beating itself to pieces.

Quimby's idea gave her her opportunity, and the vehemence with which she seized upon it attests the emptiness and hunger of her earlier years. All during her stay in Portland she haunted the old man's rooms, asking questions, reading manu scripts, observing his treatment of his patients. Quimby at