seeking. She had established a publication committee while still active in the church work, and this committee had extended its offices to every important city in America, and of late years to foreign cities. It was not Mrs. Eddy’s wish to perform an act of supererogation in giving out news of the church. Concerning her own life, she did not think it necessary to admit the world too intimately into her personal affairs, for to admit the world would be to make a parade of the simplest private virtues and devotions. Acting as she believed with the highest propriety, she consistently refused an audience to the special correspondent.
Because of this insistent privacy at Pleasant View a rumor grew up in the newspaper offices that the founder of the new religious faith; which was established on the tenet that God is able to heal all our infirmities, was herself a victim of infirmity. What that infirmity might be could only be surmised and speculated upon by the fertile brains of ingenious reporters. In May of 1905 Mrs. Eddy broke her long-continued rule and granted an interview to a representative of the Boston Herald. On that occasion she said: “All that I ask of the world is time, time to assimilate myself to God. I would take all the world to my heart if that were possible; but I can only ask my friends to look away from my personality and fix their eyes on Truth.” So gracious, so gentle, so detached, so luminous was her personality, that the interviewer could not press upon her the many questions framed for the occasion, but submitted them to Mrs. Eddy’s secretaries for her
