ith the
achievements of others in his special line of business--there is no
other way. Measured by this standard, it is thirteen hundred years
since the world has produced any one who could reach up to Mrs. Eddy's
waistbelt.

Figuratively speaking, Mrs. Eddy is already as tall as the Eiffel tower.
She is adding surprisingly to her stature every day. It is quite within
the probabilities that a century hence she will be the most imposing
figure that has cast its shadow across the globe since the inauguration
of our era. I grant that after saying these strong things, it is
necessary that I offer some details calculated to satisfactorily
demonstrate the proportions which I have claimed for her. I will do that
presently; but before exhibiting the matured sequoia gigantea, I believe
it will be best to exhibit the sprout from which it sprang. It may save
the reader from making miscalculations. The person who imagines that a
Big Tree sprout is bigger than other kinds of sprouts is quite mistaken.
It is the ordinary thing; it makes no show, it compels no notice, it
hasn't a detectible quality in it that entitles it to attention, or
suggests the future giant its sap is suckling. That is the kind of
sprout Mrs. Eddy was.

From her childhood days up to where she was running a half-century a
close race and gaining on it, she was most humanly commonplace.

She is the witness I am drawing this from. She has revealed it in her
autobiography not intentionally, of course--I am not claiming that. An
autobiography is the most treacherous thing there is. It lets out
every secret its author is trying to keep; it lets the truth shine
unobstructed through every harmless little deception he tries to play;
it pitilessly exposes him as a tin hero worshipping himself as Big Metal
every time he tries to do the modest-unconsciousness act before the
reader. This is not guessing; I am speaking from autobiographical
personal experience; I was never able to refrain from mentioning, with
a studied casualness that could deceive none but the most incautious
reader, that an ancestor of mine was sent ambassador to Spain by Charles
I., nor that in a remote branch of my family there exists a claimant
to an earldom, nor that an uncle of mine used to own a dog that was
descended from the dog that was in the Ark; and at the same time I was
never able to persuade myself to call a gibbet by its right name when
accounting for other ancestors of mine, but always s