I wish to tell you of the healing of a little girl five years old near this place last spring. She was very ill for two months, and the physicians who were called in finally said they could do no more for her. The child's body had wasted to a mere skeleton—nothing but skin and bone. She had taken only a little Mellin's food and olive oil during two months, and even this was forced upon her, for she never asked for anything to eat. She was almost sleepless, only nodding for a few moments occasionally in the daytime, and that in a sitting posture. At night there was never more than an hour's sleep.
When I first took the case, the parents knew nothing of Science, but called for it. thinking as a last resort to try what they supposed would be (as they put it) "words said over the child." After the first treatment, little Mary asked for something to eat, and the next day got out of bed and tottered into the kitchen, which greatly alarmed the mother, as the child had been so long unable to stand.
In two weeks Mary was brought eleven miles to our reading room, and on her third visit there—the day President McKinley's party went through the town—she ran from window to window, looking out and shouting gleefully at the procession passing in the street.
