During the twenty-three years that I have appreciatively read The Christian Science Journal, I have not written for it any of my many demonstrations of the facts of being, but now that the demonstration of peace within myself has been consummated, I want to tell it, knowing that my experience has not been unique, and with the hope that it may help some other girl.
Ten years ago, when just out of college, and with all a college girl's ambition, I found the world very different from my expectations. It was a very practical place for a dreamer of dreams. Feeling cheated of my birthright, I rushed headlong into the material conditions, blind to everything but the earning of money for my loved ones; yet always there was a longing for the other world, the world of literature and art and culture. I longed to see the interpretation of the characters of literature as given by the best actors; I wanted to hear the best music, and see those pictures that I loved; but always the belief that I could not do so without depriving others of necessities, deterred me. In these early days another disappointment took from me the expectation of those things for which every woman hopes.
Teaching in a city school, much work, together with many disappointments, urged me farther on in the path material, until I awoke to find myself a physical wreck. For several years the close of each school term found me with serious physical troubles and nervous exhaustion, but each summer in the clear atmosphere of home these ills would be assuaged, so that in September I was back at my work. Finally, forced to give up the larger school, I took a small country district, and here I demonstrated that it was not work but my mental attitude which made me ill, for I came home in June much lower than ever before. A few months before, I had drawn a piece of metal down my windpipe to the lung tissue, and this was giving me a great deal of trouble, together with a nervous condition and serious organic affections.
