I have been receiving you, my dear Journal, every month for over fourteen years. You seem like a cheerful friend, and it gives me fresh courage to read your pages. I am having you bound; six volumes are done. How proud I shall be of my fourteen volumes in their neat dresses. I am going to tell you of an errand of mercy that you were sent upon, about two weeks ago. A poor German woman, a widow with six little children, had been doing some washing and ironing for me, and I learned through the little boy who came for it and brought it back, that the baby was "awful sick." So I gave him one of my Christian Science Journals to take to his mother, and said, "Tell your mother to read this, and then if she wishes me to help the baby to send me word." I thought, being a Roman Catholic, she might not be willing to try Christian Science, still, I wanted to tell her about it. I think it was three days before Leo brought the washing, and he said, "My mother is not through with the book, and would like to keep it longer; her reading it has helped the baby lots." A few days afterward I saw the mother, and she told me how the poor baby had had a very bad sore on its head that the doctor could not heal, and that it had entirely healed while she was reading the Journal.
I would like to tell you of an experience I had last January. Generally patients wish to tell a great deal regarding their claims, thinking it necessary. This patient was the mother of a servant that I had at that time, who had several times remarked that she wished her mother would try Christian Science. So I told her to tell her mother the next time the came in (she lived twelve miles in the country), that she could be helped, and if she wished me to do so, I would treat her, and to let me know. When she came in again she was very anxious to have help, and came right in where I was. I treated her that day, and did not see her again till the third day. It stormed so she could not come, but I gave her absent treatment. When she came in, she took both my hands in hers, and in her broken English said. "Thank you! thank you!" I said, "You are better?" She replied, "I am well."
The day she took her first treatment she did not tell me any particulars, she only said. "I suffer so much pain." After she was healed, I learned she had had a large tumor, and the doctor had urged her to go to the hospital. Some five or six weeks ago, I was called down to the kitchen, and there was my German friend unloading apples, peas, beans, raspberries, and carrots, her "thank offering."
