human as any of us.

Yet, after all, there is something very touching in her pride in these
worthy small-fry, and something large and fine in her modesty in not
caring to remember that their kinship to her can confer no distinction
upon her, whereas her mere mention of their names has conferred upon
them a faceless earthly immortality.

CHAPTER II

When she wrote this little biography her great life-work had already
been achieved, she was become renowned; to multitudes of reverent
disciples she was a sacred personage, a familiar of God, and His
inspired channel of communication with the human race. Also, to them
these following things were facts, and not doubted:

She had written a Bible in middle age, and had published it; she had
recast it, enlarged it, and published it again; she had not stopped
there, but had enlarged it further, polished its phrasing, improved
its form, and published it yet again. It was at last become a compact,
grammatical, dignified, and workman-like body of literature. This was
good training, persistent training; and in all arts it is training that
brings the art to perfection. We are now confronted with one of the most
teasing and baffling riddles of Mrs. Eddy's history--a riddle which may
be formulated thus:

How is it that a primitive literary gun which began as a hundred-yard
flint-lock smooth-bore muzzle-loader, and in the course of forty years
has acquired one notable improvement after another--percussion cap;
fixed cartridge; rifled barrel; efficiency at half a mile how is it that
such a gun, sufficiently good on an elephant hunt (Christian Science)
from the beginning, and growing better and better all the time during
forty years, has always collapsed back to its original flint-lock
estate the moment the huntress trained it on any other creature than an
elephant?

Something more than a generation ago Mrs. Eddy went out with her
flint-lock on the rabbit range; and this was a part of the result:

"After his decease, and a severe casualty deemed fatal by skilful
physicians, we discovered that the Principle of all healing and the law
that governs it is God, a divine Principle, and a spiritual not material
law, and regained health."--Preface to Science and Health, first
revision, 1883.

N.B. Not from the book itself; from the Preface.

You will notice the awkwardness of that English. If you should carry
that paragraph up to the Supreme Court of the United States in order
to