When but a child I began to have ill health, and it was a continuous struggle to remain in school. At one time I was out for a year, thinking that would benefit me, but I grew worse steadily and never attempted to study again, though my desire had been to teach. Later I took up music, and then painting, thinking and hoping that I would be able to do something; but I soon found that it was no use to struggle, and my life seemed to be a series of disappointments and failures. During these years my parents left nothing undone to relieve me. Many physicians were tried, and many remedies, but all T received was temporary relief. Every little while the condition would become unbearable. For fourteen years there was not an hour while I was awake that I was free from pain, and often the doctors found there was nothing to do but to administer a hypodermic injection of morphine. In ten years I submitted to three operations, being under the influence of chloroform for three hours at one time. Promises of a perfect cure were made, but I can truthfully say I never received one hour's benefit from any of the operations; while one of them was such a shock to the system that it was five months before its effects were overcome. At the age of eighteen I was attacked with rheumatic trouble, and it was seven months before I was able to be out of bed a day. For years after that I suffered severely with every change of the weather, and my heart was so badly affected that it was not thought safe for me to be left alone.
I was obliged to wear glasses for defective sight in the left eye, it having been struck with a base ball, and even with the glasses I was ordered not to read more than a half hour at a time. For years I rarely slept a night without an opiate, and my life seemed one long dream of suffering. When I was married I went from my home in Cleveland, O., to Pittsburg, Pa., to live, and my husband engaged the services of the best physicians there. After their failure to benefit me, they told him that he would have to take me back to Cleveland, as the climate in Pittsburg did not agree with me. Accordingly, my husband's good position was given up, although his salary was so much needed to meet the heavy expenses caused by my sickness.
When I had exhausted all material means, and found myself at what seemed to be the end of earthly things, I was advised to try Christian Science. A year before this my sister had written to me of it, but I did not consider it for a moment, as I had been a faithful member of an orthodox church, and had had the prayers of its pastor and members, and those of my family, as well as my own, for years. It did not seem to me that God would answer the prayers of a stranger when He had apparently ignored ours; and as I was not prepared to investigate Christian Science at that time, I was obliged to drag along another weary year. When I finally asked for Christian Science treatment every ill I had ever known was met and mastered in ten days. I took treatment for a month, because it cheered me to hear my practitioner talk about the love of God as revealed through Christian Science. I was uplifted by it—encouraged and inspired. Our household goods were in storage, as it was thought I would not need them again, but they were gotten out and a large house rented, into which we went with joy and gratitude beyond description. When without help I did the work of that large house with perfect ease and comfort, my healing was put to very strong tests in many ways, but it was an established fact and could not be shaken. During the years of my illness, many hundreds of dollars had been expended, while twenty dollars paid for my complete healing in Christian Science, and for eight years we have never paid a penny to a doctor or druggist for any member of our family of four.
