The Faith Doctor: A Story of New YorkEggleston, Edward
General
The Faith Doctor: A Story of New York
Eggleston, Edward
New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction
"You might as well know, Miss Callender, that I had a business object in
view in coming to see you. Some of our Christian Science people are all
enthusiasm, but I am trained to business, and I carry on my practice on
business principles. There is no reason why a doctor who treats diseases
on the mortal plane by medication should be paid for his time, and you
and I not be. Is there?"
"I don't know," said Phillida, mechanically.
"Well, now, I have given my time to the beautiful work of Christian
Science healing. I have an office in East Fourteenth street. It is a
blessed religious work. But I can't work without pay; I follow it as a
business, and it's got to support me. I have as much right to get on in
the world as anybody else. Now I've cleared over and above my
office-rent, including what I get for teaching a class in Christian
Science, almost eighteen hundred dollars in the very first year since I
set up. That's pretty good for a lone woman; don't you think so?"
Phillida slightly inclined her head to avoid speaking.
"Well, now, I haven't got many advantages. My brother kept a health-lift
a few years ago when everything was cured by condensed exercise. But
people got tired of condensed exercise, and then he had a blue-glass
solarium until that somehow went out of fashion. I helped run the female
side of his business, you know, for part of the profits. My education is
all business. I didn't have any time to learn painting or fine manners,
or any music, except to play Moody-and-Sankeys on the melodeon. My
practice is mostly among the poor, or the people that are only so-so. I
haven't got the ways that go down with rich people, nor anybody to give
me a start among them. Well, now, I say to myself, science is all very
well, and faith is all very well, but you want something more than that
to get on in a large way. I would rather get on in a large way. Wouldn't
you?"
Here she paused, but Phillida sat motionless and stoically attentive.
She only answered, "Well, I don't know."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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