Representative women of New England/Susie C. Clark
SUSIE CHAMPNEY CLARK.—Near the summit of Nonantum Hill, which marks a boundary between Newton and Brighton, Mass., the subject of this sketch was born. Her parents, James Clark and Welthy Jane (Park) Clark, came of sterling stock in the Green Mountain State. The maternal ancestors, Daniel Harrington and Welthy (Ladd) Park, were of Puritan descent, the progenitor of their line, Richard Park, being a landed proprietor in Cambridge, Mass., in 1636. The paternal grandparents, Nathaniel and Betsey Clark, claimed for their posterity a faint strain of North American Indian blood. As the story has oome down, passed, lip to Up, from one generation to another, a Chrk maiden was carried into captivity by a chisky chief- tain in the French and Indian War. He soon after, most amiably, passed to the happy hunting-grounds of his race, his captive re- turning to her people in 'erniont, where his son, who bore the family name of his mother, Clark, became the progenitor of a line of male descendants, each bearing many of the better traits of the red man, tempered and modified by civilization, such as stalwart physique, keen love of nature, unusual strength of memory, with a marked gift of healing. Miss (^lark is said to be the seventh in descent from the chieftain, the towering height of some of her ancestors being obliterated in her very diminutive organism. She lived in Brighton until her eighth year^ when, after the loss of her fathei-, she removed with her mother to Quincy, Ill., where in the broad, free life of the A'est the forming years of her girlhood were spent. When she hail reached the age of fifteen, her mother was again married to Francis H. Johnson, of Cambridge, Mass., which city has since been her home.
Always delicate in health and completely prostrated a year or two after her removal to Cambridge, Miss Clark for many years was a confirmed and partially paralyzed invalid, her opportunities for school training being thus restricted to the high schools of Quincy and Cambridge. But the Infinite Wisdom makes no mistakes in training its instruments for appointed service, and an education was gained on that pillow of prolonged suffering which no university could grant — an education in the .sense of educing those latent powers of the soul which can only gain fruition through the growth of the spiritual or psychic nature, thus encouraged by enforced seclusion from the world of physical and mental activity. It was a hard and painful curriculum, one sadly prolonged by ignorance concerning the power of the spirit to dominate physical conditions and by unconsciousness of her own innate gifts of healing. But there came an hour, as she approached her third decade, when the purpose to be thus wrought seemed fully accomplished, when from the gates of death, through which she had nearly passed, she was raised almost instantaneously, miraculously, as it seemed, by the agency of a modern exponent of the science of healing, to perfect health and strength, an emancipation which, in the many useful years that have since elapsed, has known no illness, no pain, or exhaustion, although she has come constantly in touch with disease of every kind.
A few months later her own life work of min- istration to the sick and suffering, of uplift- ing humanity from physical bondage, opened before her, a service she might never have chosen, but she could not be disobedient to the divine prompting or to the call of human need. She has never made any claim to public {)atronage or recognition, but has performed lier mission unobtrusively, courting obscurity rather than popularity. Her name has never appeared among the advertisements in the press or on any door, at home or abroad; and no cure among her many phenomenal cases has ever been publicly reportetl. Yet many of the most noted authors, editors, and pro- fessional literati of the country are numbered among her grateful patrons, while the poor and the destitute have likewise abundantly shared in her ministrations. That her success has been unvarying, she claims is due to the fact that the element of personal effort is so largely eliminated from her work. She feels that the healing is done through her instrumentality, not by her, through a baptism from the one Power in the universe, with whom " all things are possible." Through her psychometric gift, or by the u.se of the soul's sense of touch, she has made accurate diagnoses of internal con- ditions, reflecting them in her own conscious- ness as if in a mirror placed in front of the patient. Psychic or soul healing, she claims, reaches the realm of causation, and gains at-one-ment with the hidden springs of Being as does no other method.
Miss Clark is allied with none of the modern healing cults. Christian, mental, or divine science, her work being representative of a distinct and individual type. For eighteen years she has labored constantly, in season and out of season, not alone in Boston and its extended suburbs, but in New York, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Washington, Chicago, and throughout California, where during five winters she has had a large and successful practice. She has also lectured widely in the cities above mentioned on spiritual and ethical topics, teaching many classes, outlining her gospel of health, presenting spiritual truth and the true science of Being through color symbolism and also through musical vibrations, interpretations which have proved very helpful to the many lives thus blessed and uplifted. For a time she held in Boston regular Sunday services, which served as a means of growth and refreshment to interested auditors. Of late, public speaking on a wide range of subjects has largely taken the place of the work of healing, though this duty can never be wholly laid aside. She claims that the true doctor, as the name (docere, to teach) implies, nmst ever be an efficient teacher.
Miss Clark wields also a prolific pen, and some of her books have become household benefactors. Not a few instances have been reported where marked healing has occurred from reading her early volume, "A Look upward," a book which had to be replaced in the Boston Public Library because the first copy was worn out by constant use. Other similar works of hers are entitled "To Bear Witness," "Pilate's Query," "The Melody of Life," and "Key-notes for Daily Harmonies." To quote from the New York Press: " Miss Clark presents her gospel in language quite free from the illogical and dogmatic statements of some writings in this line, and with the clear touch of psychic illumination which many others lack. Her message is one of life, of liberty, of purity, health, and the most exalted spirituality. It is a sincere, earnest, and helpful endeavor to raise mortals above the low material plane on which too many are content to exist and toil and suffer." In lighter vein she has written spicy sketches of travel in "The Round Trip from the Hub to the Golden Gate," "Lorita, an Alaskan Maiden," and "Souvenirs of Travel." Among her metaphysical pamphlets are included "What is Thought?" "The New Renaissance," "Is it Hypnotism?" "Metaphysical Queries," and "Short Lessons in Theosophy." Much editorial work has also been done by her on various journals and magazines.
Among Miss Clark's possessions are artistic gifts, whose unfoldment and exercise are held in abeyance by the more important humanitarian impulse and need. She has crossed the continent ten times, and visited every State and Territory in the Union, even Alaska being to her familiar ground. It is perhaps safe for the writer to predict that the major por- tion of Miss Clark's spiritual and literary work still awaits her.