Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/259

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HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN SCIENCE
217

for what? for just this, I have allowed my students to think I have no rights, and they can not wrong me!

May God open their eyes at length.

If you conclude not to carry the work forward on the terms named, it will have to go out of edition as I can do no more for it, and I believe this hour is to try my students who think they have the cause at heart and see if it be so. My husband is giving all his time and means to help me up from the depths in which these students plunge me and this is all he can do at present. Please write soon.

As ever,
Mary. 

Send me the two books that are corrected and just as soon as you can, and I with Gilbert will read them.[1]

Please tell me if you are going to have the chapter on Physiology in a book by itself that I may get the preface ready as soon as I am able.

I do nothing else when I have a day I can work. Will send you the final corrections soon.

Think of me when you feel strong and well only, and think only of me as well

Ever yrs. in
Truth
Mary. 

It is an interesting fact that, however incoherent Mrs. Eddy became in other matters, she was never so in business. Through hysteria and frantic distress of mind, her shrewd business sense remained alert and keen. When, upon receipt of this letter, Mr. Spofford wrote her that he did not see how he could pay all the cost of printing, advertising, and putting the second edition upon the market, and still pay Mrs. Eddy her twenty-five cent. royalty upon each copy sold, she replied to him that her work upon the book would more than offset his invested capital:

"The conditions I have named to you," she wrote, "I think are just. I give three years and more to offset the capital


  1. Mr. Spofford had agreed to mark the typographical and other errors in two copies of the first edition of Science and Health.