WORLD OF WOMEN 660 a free advertisement page for the unem- pioyed. These papers are issued from the pubHshing offices in Boston. The "Moni- tor" was floated with Hghtning-like rapidity some two years ago. Mrs. Eddy expressed a wish to her board of directors that there should be a Christian Science daily paper, in ninety days it was an accomplished fact. In that time some old property was pulled down and the newspaper offices built on the site, machinery installed, the staff of the papsr formed, and the entire venture organised, as a going concern. Women are given perfect equality in the Christian Science movement. Where there are two readers to a church, or society, one is always a woman, and sometimes both are women. Many of the finest churches have been founded by women. There is no office throughout the organisation which a woman may not hold, and the head and founder of the community is the revered " Mother," Mrs. Eddy. The Founder's Life-story The life-story of this remarkable woman is practically the history of Christian Science. She was Mary Baker, the daughter of a New England farmer, and was born on July 16, 1821, at the Baker homestead at Bow, near the city of Concord, Massachusetts. Her earliest ancestor emigrated from East Anglia to Charlestown, jNIassachusetts, in 1634. Mrs. Eddy was not an ordinary child. She was extremely delicate and sensitive, and, according to some accounts, very difficult to manage, being subject to alarming fits of hysteria. She had practically no education until she was in her teens, when her father removed to Sanborton Bridge, near Til ton. eighteen miles from Concord. There she attended school. In her autobiography, " Retrospection and Introspection," Mrs. Eddy records that she was kv.pc b ck f /cm much learniixg because her " brain was too large for her body." Siie is gra ifi.d to remembar that after she discovered Christian Sciencs most of the knowl dg3 w.ach she "hc-d gbaned from schooi-bjoks vi. ashed like a dream." She gloried in the f.cc that her mind was virgin soil to receive the serds of Divine learning or science. Mrs. Eddy wasstiictly brought up in Pu.itan principijs, and early became a member of the Congregational Church at Tilton. Her Three Husbands Mrs. Eddy is described as having been an attractive and graceful girl, dressing with taste, and desirous of making a good im- pression. She had great influence over men and inspired considerable devotion in her successive husbands, of whom there were three. At twenty-two she married George Glover, a sturdy, good-natured young man, a builder and contractor by profession. He died six months later, and his posthumous son was his wife's only child. In 1853 she married Dr. Patterson, a dentist, and in 1877 became the wife of Mr. Asa Gilbert Eddy, who died in 1882. Until she was forty-six years of age, Mrs. Eddy's life was a continual struggle with ill- health and sordid circumstances ; so much so that in her autobiography she wipes out the years from her twenty-third to her forty- sixth birthday as having nothing worthy of note to record. From other sources we learn, of her eccentricities, her hysteria, which manifested itself in ways somewhat trouble- some to her family and friends. At one time she had a swing, or cradle, attached to the ceiling in which she would be oscillated for hours to relieve the nervous tension of her body. How She Found Her Vocation She was kind and charitable, so far as circumstances allowed, and had rema kible influence over those with whom she came in contact. She made attempts at authoiship, and investigated mesmerism, spiritualism, and other occult studies. Through various paths she was groping her way towards the religious cult at which she ultimately arrived. The most notable incident in this period of spiritual and physical strirggle was her visit, in 1862, to Portland, Maine, to consult Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, who was per- forming marvellous cures as a mental healer. He called his discovery the " Science of Health." He believed that disease and sick- ness could be conquered by mind. Mrs. Eddy — ^Mrs. Patterson she was then — came to Dr. Quimby in a terribly weak condition, so weak, indeed, that she was scarcely able to crawl upstairs to his consult- ing-room. On her own testimony she left it a cured woman. " I am," she wrote to Dr. Quimby, " a living wonder, and a living monument of your power. . . . My explanation of your curative principle sur- prises pecple, especially those whose minds are all matter." The future founder of the Christian Science movement had at length discovered a voca- tion as well as obtaining restored health. She continued to be an enthusiastic disciple of Dr. Quimby, and defended his methods in the Press. He died some four years later, but by that time Mrs. Eddy had begun an original and independent study of mind-healing. Essays written by her at this period are still in circulation amongst her first pupils, but Mrs. Eddy characterises them as " feeble attempts to state the Principle and practice of Christian healing, and not complete nor satisfactory expositions of Truth." The Growth of Christian Science Mrs. Eddy's discovery of Christian Science is usually held to date from 1866, when she first began to expound her Scriptural studies. Her first pamphlet on Christian Science was copyrighted in 1870, but it did not appear in print until 1876, because, to use her own words, she " had learned that this Science must be demonstrated by healing before a
