Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/288

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246
LIFE OF MARY BAKER G. EDDY AND

ous to the date upon which Mrs. Eddy and Kennedy went to Lynn to practise, and which read as follows:

February, 1870. 

In consideration of two years' instruction in healing the sick, I hereby agree to pay Mary M. B. Glover, one thousand dollars in quarterly instalments of fifty dollars commencing from this date.

(Signed) Richard Kennedy.

Mr. Kennedy admitted having signed the note, but testified that when Mrs. Eddy asked him to do so she said that she would never collect it, and that she wanted the paper simply to show to prospective students to convince them of the monetary value of her instruction. He further testified that though, when he signed the note, he had been studying with Mrs. Glover-Eddy for two years, he believed at the time that she was withholding from him the final and most illuminating secrets of her Science, and that he had reason to believe that, if he complied with her request in regard to the note, she would disclose them to him.

In his answer he stated that Mrs. Eddy had "obtained the promissory note declared on by pretending that she had important secrets relating to healing the sick which she had not theretofore imparted to defendant, and which she promised to impart after the making and delivery to her of said note, and she then had no such secrets and never afterward undertook to impart or imparted such secrets."

The Municipal Court awarded judgment for the plaintiff of seven hundred and sixty-eight dollars and sixty-three cents, but the case was carried to the Superior Court and tried before a jury, which returned a verdict for Mr. Kennedy.

In April, 1878, came Mrs. Eddy's suit against George H. Tuttle and Charles S. Stanley, two of her earliest students, to