ikelihood that Quimby's persuasions would
ever have carried beyond the man himself if he had not found in Mrs.
Eddy so creative a disciple.

The outstanding facts of Mary Baker Eddy's life are too well known to
need much retelling here. The story of her life and the history of
Christian Science as told by Georgine Milmine in _McClure's Magazine_
during the years of 1907-8 is final. It is based upon thorough
investigation, original documents and an exhaustive analysis of facts.
The facts brought out in the various litigations in which Mrs. Eddy and
the church have been involved confirm both the statements and
conclusions of this really distinctive work. The official life by Sibyl
Wilbur (whose real name seems to be O'Brien) is so coloured as to be
substantially undependable. It touches lightly or omits altogether those
passages in Mrs. Eddy's life which do not fit in with the picture which
Mrs. Eddy herself and the church desire to be perpetuated.

Mrs. Eddy was descended from a shrewd, industrious and strongly
characterized New England stock. Her father was strongly set in his
ways, narrow and intense in his religious faith. Mary Baker was a
nervous, high-strung girl, unusually attractive in personal appearance,
proud, precocious, self-conscious, masterful. She was subject to
hysterical attacks which issued in states of almost suspended animation.
Her family feared these attacks and to prevent them humoured her in
every way. In due time she joined the Tilton Congregational Church. She
says herself that she was twelve years old at the time, but the records
of the church make her seventeen. The range of her education is debated.
Mrs. Eddy herself claims a rather ambitious curriculum. "My father," she
says, "was taught to believe that my brain was too large for my body and
so kept me out of school, but I gained book knowledge with far less
labour than is usually requisite. At ten years of age I was familiar
with Lindley Murray's Grammar, as with the Westminster Catechism and
the latter I had to repeat every Sunday. My favourite studies were
Natural Philosophy, logic and moral science. From my brother Albert I
received lessons in the ancient tongues, Hebrew, Greek and Latin. After
my discovery of Christian Science most of the knowledge I gleaned from
school books vanished like a dream. Learning was so illumined that
grammar was eclipsed. Etymology was divine history, voicing the idea of
God in man's origin and significatio