I can smile now at memory of the stuffy little parlour into which I was ushered, but I did not smile then at it, nor at the middle-aged woman who received me with a set smile of stereotyped placidity. Her name, I think, was Mallard. "Have you a conviction of disease, my daughter?" she asked, in a low voice with a caressing overtone gurgling in its cadences. "You look as radiant as the morn. You should not think ill." "I am not ill," I replied; "but the world is harsh." "The world is the expression of our sense life to the spirit," she cooed. "We do not live or die, but we pass through the phenomena. Through the purifying of our thoughts we will gradually become more and more ethereal until we are translated." I felt that momentary shiver that folk tales tells us is caused by some one walking over our graves. "I'm in no haste to be translated," I said. "No one need be translated until she is ready--unless she has enemies. Are you suffering from the errors of others? Has any one felt fear for you? That would account for what the world calls unhappiness. Is some one trying to influence your subjective state?" "I am convinced of it," I said with wasted sarcasm. "But you can do nothing for me; you can't--can you work on unbelievers?" "Most assuredly. We are channels through which truth must flow to our patients. I need not tell you what I myself have done."--Mrs. Mallard modestly cast down her eyes.--"Mrs. Eddy has healed carous bones and cancers. I--some of our healers can dissuade the conviction of decayed teeth. The 'filling,' as the world calls it, is, in such cases, pink and very durable. If these marvels can be wrought upon the body, why may not the mind be led toward healing? Confide; confide." "Heal the world of its hate of me," I cried out. "What you say is all so vague. Does the mind exist?" "It Is the only thing that does exist. Without mind man and the universe would collapse; the winds would weary and the world stand still. Sin-tossed humanity, expressed in tempest and flood, the divine mind calms and limits with a word." I rose hastily to go. Chance alone and weariness of life had led me to enter the woman's parlor, but there was no forgetfulness in it. Impatience spurred me to be moving, and I turned to the door, with the polite fiction that I was leaving town but might soon consult the healer. "That makes no difference," she persisted, getting between me and the door. "We treat many cases, of belief in unhappiness by the absent method. From 9 to 10 A. M. we go into the Silence for our Eastern patients. Our ten o'clock is nine o'clock for those living in the central time belt. At 11 A. M. it is nine for those in Denver or Rocky Mountain time region. Thus we are in the Silence during the entire forenoon, but it is always nine for the patient. Will you not arrange for treatment; you really look very badly?" "Not today." I pushed past her.