would have nothing to do with the scornful. Unless one really wished to be cured, he said, his methods had no virtue. On one occasion, instead of taking his place beside a certain patient, he turned his chair directly around and sat back to back. "That's the way you feel toward me," he declared. His offices were constantly filled with patients, and his mail was enormous. People came to consult him from all over New England and the Far West. He treated "absently" thousands who could not visit him in person.
Mrs. Julius A. Dresser, one of his early patients and converts, thus describes her first meeting with Mr. Quimby:
I found a kindly gentleman who met me with such sympathy and gentleness that I immediately felt at ease. He seemed to know at once the attitude of mind of those who applied to him for help, and adapted himself to them accordingly. His years of study of the human mind, of sickness in all its forms, and of the prevailing religious beliefs, gave him the ability to see through the opinions, doubts, and fears of those who sought his aid, and put him in instant sympathy with their mental attitudes. He seemed to know that I had come to him feeling that he was a last resort, and with little faith in him and his mode of treatment. But, instead of telling me that I was not sick, he sat beside me and explained to me what my sickness was, how I got into the condition, and the way I could have been taken out of it through the right understanding. He seemed to see through the situation from the beginning, and explained the cause and effect so clearly that I could see a little of what he meant. My case was so serious, however, that he did not at first tell me I could be made well. But there was such an effect produced by his explanation, that I felt a new hope within me, and began to get well from that day.
He continued to explain my case from day to day, giving me some idea of his theory and its relation to what I had been taught to believe, and sometimes sat silently with me for a short time. I did not understand much that he said, but I felt the spirit and the life that came with his words; and I found myself gaining steadily. Some of these pithy sayings of his remained constantly in mind, and were very helpful in preparing the way for a better understanding of his thought, such, for instance, as his remark that, "Whatever we believe, that we create," or, "Whatever opinion we put into a thing, that we take out of it."
