In 1898, a friend who was on a visit here hunted me me up to share with me the good tidings, the wonderful message contained in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures."
She found me a physical and almost a mental wreck—the result of overwork, worry, and the grip—about to lose my position as official stenographer of the United States Courts". The condition was chaos, mentally, physically, financially. I had been ill four months, had a worn-out stomach, and was in a state of complete nervous collapse. After I was able to sit up I endeavored to undertake the transcription of some unfinished testimony, when I found to my dismay that I could not read coherently one page of my shorthand notes; I could not think connectedly. This meant ruin to me, as I had a son whom I had to support and for whom 1 had spent my life in loving later. When Christian Science was presented to me I said that I did not want to study it then, but I did want help. I was given a present treatment, with the result that next day I sat down to my desk and was enabled to do two hours' satisfactory and connected work. I received ten days' absent treatment; my improvement was steady, and within a month I was in the courtroom again and did the best reporting I had been capable of up to that time. Since then I have held another official position and have been able to take care of the business of a stenographic office of my own.
I did not, however, become actively interested in Christian Science and the study of the text-book until three years later, when for the first time I attended a Wednesday night meeting at a time when another financial crisis was confronting me. Those wonderful words of our beloved Leader, "Divine Love always has met, and always will meet, every human need" (Science and Health, p. 494), met my gaze on the walls of the church. The vastness of the promise uplifted me. The impressions of that first visit to a Christian Science church will never fade. I immediately began the study of Science and Health with great earnestness, and never tire of its wonderful teaching.
