McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908Various
General
McClure's Magazine, Vol. 31, No. 1, May 1908
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
On Sunday, January 26, 1908, at two o'clock in the afternoon, Mrs.
Eddy, attended by nearly a score of her followers, boarded a special
train at Concord. Extraordinary precautions were taken to prevent
accidents. A pilot-engine preceded the locomotive which drew Mrs.
Eddy's special train, and the train was followed by a third engine to
prevent the possibility of a rear-end collision--a precaution never
before adopted, even by the royal trains abroad. Dr. Alpheus B.
Morrill, a second cousin of Mrs. Eddy and a practising physician of
Concord, was of her party. Mrs. Eddy's face was heavily veiled when
she took the train at Concord and when she alighted at Chestnut Hill
station. Her carriage arrived at the Lawrence house late in the
afternoon, and she was lifted out and carried into the house by one of
her male attendants.
Mrs. Eddy's new residence is a fine old stone mansion which has been
enlarged without injury to its original dignity. The grounds cover an
area of about twelve acres and are well wooded. The house itself now
contains about twenty-five rooms. There is an electric elevator
adjoining Mrs. Eddy's private apartments. Two large vaults have been
built into the house--doubtless designed as repositories for Mrs.
Eddy's manuscripts. Since her arrival at Chestnut Hill, Mrs. Eddy,
upon one of her daily drives, saw for the first time the new building
which completes the Mother Church and which, like the original modest
structure, is a memorial to her.
There are many reasons why Mrs. Eddy may have decided to leave
Concord. But the extravagant haste with which her new residence was
got ready for her--a body of several hundred laborers was kept busy
upon it all day, and another shift, equally large, worked all night by
the aid of arc-lights--would seem to suggest that even if practical
considerations brought about Mrs. Eddy's change of residence, her
extreme impatience may have resulted from a more personal motive. It
is, indeed, very probable that Mrs. Eddy left Concord for the same
reason that she left Boston years ago: because she felt that malicious
animal magnetism was becoming too strong for her there. The action
brought by her son in Concord last summer she attributed entirely to
the work of mesmerists who were supposed to be in control of her son's
mind. Mrs. Eddy always believed that this strange miasma of evil had a
curious tendency to become localized: that certain streets,
mail-boxes, telegraph-offices, vehicles, could be totally suborned by
these invisible currents of hatred and ill-will that had their source
in the minds of her enemies and continually encircled her. She
believed that in this way an entire neighborhood could be made
inimical to her, and it is quite possible that, after the recent
litigation in Concord, she felt that the place had become saturated
with mesmerism and that she would never again find peace there.
_Mrs. Eddy at Eighty_
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account