was outside the door, and that in the house were none but
the femily and the stranger. "Would the family steal
their own property ? " He paused. The elders sat silent
many minutes ; at last, one after another said to his
neighbour, " This looks bad for the stranger " sorrowful
words for me to hear. Then my father sat down. O
miserable, miserable me ! At that very moment I could
have proved my darling innocent, but I did not know it !
* The chief of the court asked :
* " Is there any here to defend the prisoner ? "
* I rose and said :
< " Why should he steal that hook, or any or all of
them ? In another day he would have been heir to the
whole ! "
* I stood waiting. There was a long silence, the steam
THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN S ROMANCE 89
"w
from the many breaths rising about me like a fog. At last
one elder after another nodded his head slowly several times,
and muttered, " There is force in what the child has said."
Oh, the heart-lift that was in those words ! so transient,
but, oh, so precious ! I sat down.
"If any would say further, let him speak now, or after
hold his peace," said the chief of the court.
My father rose and said :
"In the night a form passed by me in the gloom,
going toward the treasury and presently returned. I think,
now, it was the stranger."
Oh, I was like to swoon ! I had supposed that that
was my secret ; not the grip of the great Ice God himself
could have dragged it out of my heart. The chief of the
court said sternly to my poor Kalula :
" Speak ! "
Kalula hesitated, then answered :
" It was I. I could not sleep for thinking of the beau
tiful hooks. I went there and kissed them and fondled
them, to appease my spirit and drown it in a harmless joy,
then I put them back. I may have dropped one, but I
stole none."
Oh, a fatal admission to make in such a place ! There
was an awful hush. I knew he had pronounced his own
doom, and that all was over. On every face you could see
the words hieroglyphed : " It is a confession ! and paltry,
lame, and thin."
I sat drawing in my breath in faint gasps and waiting.
Presently, I heard the solemn words I knew were coming ;
and each word, as it came, was a knife in my heart :
" It is the command of the court that the accused be
subjected to the trial by water"
Oh, curses be upon the head of him who brought
90 THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN S ROMANCE
" trial by water " to our land ! It came, generations ago,
from some far country that lies none knows where. Before
that our fathers used augury and other unsure methods of
trial, and doubtless some poor guilty creatures escaped with
their lives sometimes ; but it is not so with trial by water,
which is an invention by wiser men than we poor ignorant
savages are. By it the innocent are proved innocent, with
out doubt or question, for they drown ; and the guilty are
proven guilty with the same certainty, for they do not
drown. My heart was breaking in my bosom, for I said,
" He is innocent, and he will go down under the waves and
I shall never see him more."
I never left his side after that. I mourned in his arms
all the precious hours, and he poured out the deep stream of
his love upon me, and oh, I was so miserable and so happy !
At last, they tore him from me, and I followed sobbing after
them, and saw them fling him into the sea then I covered
my face with my hands. Agony ? Oh, I know the
deepest deeps of that word !
1 The next moment the people burst into a shout of
malicious joy, and I took away my hands, startled. Oh,
bitter sight he was swimming ! My heart turned instantly
to stone, to ice. I said, " He was guilty, and he lied to
me ! " I turned my back in scorn and went my way home
ward.
* They took him far out to sea and set him on an ice
berg that was drifting southward in the great waters.
Then my family came home, and my father said to me :
" Your thief sent his dying message to you, saying,
Tell her I am innocent, and that all the days and all the
hours and all the minutes while I starve and perish I shall
love her and think of her and bless the day that gave me
sight of her sweet face. " Quite pretty, even poetical !
THE ESQUIMAUX MAIDEN S ROMANCE 91
* I said, " He is dirt let me never hear mention of him
again." And oh, to think he was innocent all the time !
Nine months nine dull, sad months went by, and
at last came the day of the Great Annual Sacrifice, when
all the maidens of the tribe wash their faces and comb their
hair. With the first sweep of my comb out came the fatal
fish-hook from where it had been all those months nestling,
and I fell fainting into the arms of my remorseful father !
Groaning, he said, " We murdered him, and I shall never
smile again ! " He has kept his word. Listen ; from that
day to this not a month goes by that I do not comb my hair.
But oh, where is the good of it all now !
So ended the poor maid s humble little tale whereby
we learn that since a hundred million dollars in New York
and twenty-two fish-hooks on the border of the Arctic
Circle represent the same financial supremacy, a man in
straitened circumstances is a fool to stay in New York when
he can buy ten cents worth of fish-hooks and emigrate.
92 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY
It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice has gone
crashing through space with such placid and complacent confidence and
command.
THIS last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna
from the Appetite-Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff
in the twilight and broke some arms and legs and one
thing or another, and by good luck was found by some
peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the
nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low,
thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret
for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep
gable decorated with boxes of bright-coloured flowers and
cats ; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room,
separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition ;
and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and
pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is
Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of
mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables
a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing
cars.
AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY 93
There was a village a mile away, and a horse-doctor
lived there, but there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad
outlook ; mine was distinctly a surgery case. Then it was
remembered that a lady from Boston was summering in
that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and
could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was niirht
J o o
by this time, and she could not conveniently come, but sent
word that it was no matter, there was no hurry, she would
give me absent treatment now, and come in the morning ;
meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and
comfortable and remember that there was nothing the
matter with me. I thought there must be some mistake.
Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet
high ?
Yes.
And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced ?
< Yes.
And struck another one and bounced again ?
< Yes.
And struck another one and bounced yet again ?
Yes.
And broke the boulders ?
* Yes.
That accounts for it ; she is thinking of the boulders.
Why didn t you tell her I got hurt, too ?
* I did. I told her what you told me to tell her : that
you were now but an incoherent series of compound
fractures extending from your scalp-lock to your heels, and
that the comminated projections caused you to look like a
hat-rack.
1 And it was after this that she wished me to remember
that there was nothing the matter with me ?
Those were her words.
94 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
1 1 do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed
the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a person
who was theorising, or did she look like one who has fallen
off precipices herself and brings to the aid of abstract science
the confirmation of personal experience ?
* Bitte ?
It was too large a contract for the Stubenm&dchen s
vocabulary ; she couldn t call the hand. I allowed the
subject to rest there, and asked for something to eat and
smoke, and something hot to drink, and a basket to pile my
legs in, and another capable person to come and help me
curse the time away j but I could not have any of these
things.
Why ?
* She said you would need nothing at all.
* But I am hungry and thirsty, and in desperate
pain.
She said you would have these delusions, but must
pay no attention to them. She wants you to particularly
remember that there are no such things as hunger and thirst
and pain.
1 She does, does she ? *
It is what she said.
1 Does she seem to be in full and functional possession
of her intellectual plant, such as it is ?
* Bitte ?
* Do they let her run at large, or do they tie her up ?
* Tie her up ?
* There, good-night, run along ; you are a good girl,
but your mental Geschirr is not arranged for light and airy
conversation. Leave me to my delusions.
AND THE BOOK OF MRS, EDDY 95
II
It was a night of anguish, of course at least I supposed
it was, for it had all the symptoms of it but it passed at
last, and the Christian Scientist came, and I was glad. She
was middle-aged, and large and bony and erect, and had an
austere face and a resolute jaw and a Roman beak and was
a widow in the third degree, and her name was Fuller. I
was eager to get to business and find relief, but she was
distressingly deliberate. She unpinned and unhooked and
uncoupled her upholsteries one by one, abolished the
wrinkles with a flirt of her hand and hung the articles up ;
peeled off her gloves and disposed of them, got a book out
of her hand-bag, then drew a chair to the bedside, descended
into it without hurry, and I hung out my tongue. She
said, with pity but without passion :
Return it to its receptacle. We deal with the mind
only, not with its dumb servants.
I could not offer my pulse, because the connection was
broken ; but she detected the apology before I could word
it, and indicated by a negative tilt of her head that the pulse
was another dumb servant that she had no use for. Then
I thought I would tell her my symptoms and how I felt, so
that she would understand the case ; but that was another
inconsequence, she did not need to know those things ;
moreover, my remark about how I felt was an abuse of
language, a misapplication of terms
* One does not fcelj she explained ; ( there is no such
thing as feeling : therefore, to speak of a non-existent thing
as existent is a contradiction. Matter has no existence ;
nothing exists but mind ; the mind cannot feel pain, it can
only imagine it.
But if it hurts, just the same
96 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
* It doesn t. A thing which is unreal cannot exercise
the functions of reality. Pain is unreal ; hence pain cannot
hurt.
In making a sweeping gesture to indicate the act of
shooing the illusion of pain out of the mind, she raked her
hand on a pin in her dress, said * Ouch ! and went
tranquilly on with her talk. You should never allow
yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask
you how you are feeling : you should never concede that
you are ill, nor permit others to talk about disease or pain
or death or similar non-existences in your presence. Such
talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty
imaginings. Just at that point the Stubenmadchen trod on
the cat s tail, and the cat let fly a frenzy of cat-profanity.
I asked with caution :
Is a cat s opinion about pain valuable ?
* A cat has no opinion ; opinions proceed from the mind
only ; the lower animals, being eternally perishable, have not
been granted mind ; without mind opinion is impossible.
4 She merely imagined she felt a pain the cat ?
1 She cannot imagine a pain, for imagination is an effect
of mind ; without mind, there is no imagination. A cat
has no imagination.
Then she had a real pain ?
I have already told you there is no such thing as real
pain.
* It is strange and interesting. I do wonder what was
the matter with the cat. Because, there being no such
thing as real pain, and she not being able to imagine an
imaginary one, it would seem that God in His pity has com
pensated the cat with some kind of a mysterious emotion
useable when her tail is trodden on which for the moment
joins cat and Christian in one common brotherhood of
AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY 97
She broke in with an irritated
Peace ! The cat feels nothing, the Christian feels
nothing. Your empty and foolish imaginings are profana
tion and blasphemy, and can do you an injury. It is wiser
and better and holier to recognise and confess that there is
no such thing as disease or pain or death.
1 am full of imaginary tortures, I said, but I do not
think I could be any more uncomfortable if they were real
ones. What must I do to get rid of them ?
There is no occasion to get rid of them, since they do
not exist. They are illusions propagated by matter, and
matter has no existence ; there is no such thing as matter.
It sounds right and clear, but yet it seems in a degree
elusive ; it seems to slip through, just when you think you
are getting a grip on it.
Explain.
* Well, for instance : if there is no such thing as matter,
how can matter propagate things ?
In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have
smiled if there were any such thing as a smile.
1 It is quite simple, she said ; c the fundamental pro
positions of Christian Science explain it, and they are
summarised in the four following self-evident propositions :
I. God is All in all. 2. God is good. Good is Mind.
3. God, Spirit, being all, nothing is matter. 4. Life, God,
omnipotent Good, deny death, evil, sin, disease. There
now you see.
It seemed nebulous : it did not seem to say anything
about the difficulty in hand how non-existent matter can
propagate illusions. I said, with some hesitancy :
Does does it explain ?
* Doesn t it ? Even if read backward it will do it.
With a budding hope, I asked her to do it backward.
98 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
* Very well. Disease sin evil death deny Good omni
potent God life matter is nothing all being Spirit God Mind
is Good good is God all in All is God. There do you
understand now ?
* It it well, it is plainer than it was before ; still
< Well ?
* Could you try it some more ways ?
* As many as you like : it always means the same.
Interchanged in any way you please it cannot be made to
mean anything different from what it means when put in
any other way. Because it is perfect You can jumble
it all up, and it makes no difference : it always comes out
the way it was before. It was a marvellous mind that
produced it. As a mental tour de force it is without a
mate, it defies alike the simple, the concrete, and the
occult.
It seems to be a corker.
I blushed for the word, but it was out before I could
stop it.
A what?
A wonderful structure combination, so to speak, or
profound thoughts unthinkable ones un
It is true. Read backwards, or forwards, or per
pendicularly, or at any given angle, these four propositions
will always be found to agree in statement and proof.
Ah proof. Now we are coming at it. The
statements agree ; they agree with with anyway, they
agree ; I noticed that ; but what is it they prove I mean,
in particular ?
Why, nothing could be clearer. They prove : I . GOD
Principle, Life, Truth, Love, Soul, Spirit, Mind. Do
you get that ?
* I well, I seem to. Go on, please.
AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY 99
2. MAN God s universal idea, individual, perfect,
eternal. Is it clear ?
It I think so. Continue.
3. IDEA An image in Mind ; the immediate object
of understanding. There it is the whole sublime Arcana of
Christian Science in a nutshell. Do you find a weak place
in it anywhere ?
Well no : it seems strong.
* O
Very well. There is more. Those three constitute the
Scientific Definition of Immortal Mind. Next, we have
the Scientific Definition of Mortal Mind. Thus. FIRST
DEGREE : Depravity, i. Physical Passions and appetites,
fear, depraved will, pride, envy, deceit, hatred, revenge, sin,
disease, death.
Phantasms, madam unrealities, as I understand it.
Every one. SECOND DEGREE: Evil Disappearing.
I. Moral Honesty, affection, compassion, hope, faith,
meekness, temperance. Is it clear ?
Crystal.
THIRD DEGREE: Spiritual Salvation. I. Spiritual
Faith, wisdom, power, purity, understanding, health, love.
You see how searchingly and coordinately interdependent
and anthropomorphous it all is. In this Third Degree,
as we know by the revelations of Christian Science, mortal
mind disappears.
Not earlier ?
No, not until the teaching and preparation for the
Third Degree are completed.
It is not until then that one is enabled to take hold of
Christian Science effectively, and with the right sense of
sympathy and kinship, as I understand you. That is to say,
it could not succeed during the processes of the Second
Degree, because there would still be remains of mind left ;
H 2
ioo CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
and therefore but I interrupted you. You were about to
further explain the good results proceeding from the erosions
and disintegrations effected by the Third Degree. It is
very interesting : go on, please.
4 Yes, as I was saying, in this Third Degree mortal mind
disappears. Science so reverses the evidence before the
corporeal human senses as to make this scriptural testimony
true in our hearts, " the last shall be first and the first shall
be last," that God and His idea may be to us what
divinity really is, and must of necessity be all-inclusive.
It is beautiful. And with what exhaustive exactness
your choice and arrangement of words confirms and
establishes what you have claimed for the powers and
functions of the Third Degree. The Second could probably
produce only temporary absence of mind, it is reserved to
the Third to make it permanent. A sentence framed
under the auspices of the Second could have a kind of mean
ing a sort of deceptive semblance of it whereas it is only
under the magic of the Third that that defect would
disappear. Also, without doubt, it is the Third Degree
that contributes another remarkable specialty to Christian
Science : viz., ease and flow and lavishness of words, and
rhythm and swing and smoothness. There must be a special
reason for this ?
* Yes God - all, all-God, good God, non - Matter,
Matteration, Spirit, Bones, Truth.
* That explains it.
There is nothing in Christian Science that is not
explicable ; for God is one, Time is one, Individuality is one,
and may be one of a series, one of many, as an individual
man, individual horse ; whereas God is one, not one of a
series, but one alone and without an equal.
4 These are noble thoughts. They make one burn to
AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY 101
know more. How does Christian Science explain the
spiritual relation of systematic duality to incidental deflec
tion ?
* Christian Science reverses the seeming relation of Soul
O
and body as astronomy reverses the human perception of
the movement of the solar system and makes body tributary
to Mind. As it is the earth which is in motion, while the
sun is at rest, though in viewing the sun rise one finds it
impossible to believe the sun not to be really rising, so
the body is but the humble servant of the restful Mind,
though it seems otherwise to finite sense ; but we shall
never understand this while we admit that soul is in body,
or mind in matter, and that man is included in non-
intelligence. Soul is God, unchangeable and eternal ; and
man coexists with and reflects Soul, for the All-in-all is the
Altogether, and the Altogether embraces the All-one, Soul-
Mind, Mind-Soul, Love, Spirit, Bones, Liver, one of a
series, alone and without an equal.
(It is very curious, the effect which Christian Science
has upon the verbal bowels. Particularly the Third Degree ;
it makes one think of a dictionary with the cholera. But I
only thought this ; I did not say it.)
What is the origin of Christian Science ? Is it a gift
of God, or did it just happen ?
* In a sense, it is a gift of God. That is to say, its
powers are from Him, but the credit of the discovery of
the powers and what they are for is due to an American
lady.
Indeed ? When did this occur :
4 In 1866. That is the immortal date when pain and
disease and death disappeared from the earth to return no
more for ever. That is, the fancies for which those terms
stand, disappeared. The things themselves had never
102 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
existed ; therefore as soon as it was perceived that there
were no such things, they were easily banished. The
history and nature of the great discovery are set down in
the book here, and
* Did the lady write the book ?
* Yes, she wrote it all, herself. The title is " Science
and Health, with Key to the Scriptures " for she explains
the Scriptures ; they were not understood before. Not
even by the twelve Disciples. She begins thus I will read
it to you.
But she had forgotten to bring her glasses.
Well, it is no matter, she said, * I remember the words
indeed, all Christian Scientists know the book by heart ;
it is necessary in our practice. We should otherwise make
mistakes and do harm. She begins thus : " In the year
1866 I discovered the Science of Metaphysical Healing, and
named it Christian Science." And she says quite beauti
fully, I think " Through Christian Science, religion and
medicine are inspired with a diviner nature and essence,
fresh pinions are given to faith and understanding, and
thoughts acquaint themselves intelligently with God "
Her very words.
It is elegant. And it is a fine thought, too marrying
religion to medicine, instead of medicine to the undertaker
in the old way ; for religion and medicine properly belong
together, they being the basis of all spiritual and physical
health. What kind of medicine do you give for the
ordinary diseases, such as
* We never give medicine in any circumstances what
ever ! We
* But, madam, it says
* I don t care what it says, and I don t wish to talk
about it.
AND THE BOOK OF MRS. EDDY 103
I am sorry if I have offended, but you see the mention
seemed in some way inconsistent, and
There are no inconsistencies in Christian Science.
The thing is impossible, for the Science is absolute. It
cannot be otherwise, since it proceeds directly from the
All-in-all and the Everything-in-Which, also Soul, Bones,
Truth, one of a series, alone and without equal. It is
Mathematics purified from material dross and made
spiritual.
I can see that, but
It rests upon the immovable basis of an Apodictical
Principle.
The word flattened itself against my mind in trying to
get in, and disordered me a little, and before I could inquire
into its pertinency, she was already throwing the needed
light :
This Apodictical Principle is the absolute Principle of
Scientific Mind-healing, the sovereign Omnipotence which
delivers the children of men from pain, disease, decay, and
every ill that flesh is heir to.
* Surely not every ill, every decay ?
* Every one ; there are no exceptions ; there is no such
thing as decay it is an unreality, it has no existence.
But without your glasses your failing eyesight does
not permit you to
My eyesight cannot fail ; nothing can fail ; the Mind
is master, and the Mind permits no retrogression.
She was under the inspiration of the Third Degree,
therefore there could be no profit in continuing this part of
the subject. I shifted to other ground and inquired further
concerning the Discoverer of the Science.
Did the discovery come suddenly, like Klondike, or
after long study and calculation, like America . ?
io 4 CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
4 The comparisons are not respectful, since they refer to
trivialities but let it pass. I will answer in the Discoverer s
own words : " God had been graciously fitting me, during
many years, for the reception of a final revelation of the
absolute Principle of Scientific Mind-healing."
Many years. How many ?
1 Eighteen centuries !
t All God, God-good, good-God, Truth, Bones, Liver,
one of a series alone and without equal it is amazing !
* You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth.
This American lady, our revered and sacred founder, is dis
tinctly referred to and her coming prophesied, in the twelfth
chapter of the Apocalypse ; she could not have been more
plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning