From earliest childhood up to middle age my most intimate acquaintance was the family physician. I had physicians in many states, and when I look back, my heart fills with deep gratitude for the many kindnesses and ever ready response of these men to my every call. They did all they could for me, but pronounced me without a sound organ in my body, and said I did not have enough vitality to last long. It was generally conceded that the ailments were inherited and could not be rooted out. I had trouble with my heart and suffered for years with stomach disorder. Headaches had been the bane of my life almost since babyhood, and I also suffered from nervous exhaustion. Then, too, I had no appetite; indeed, I was in a sad plight. While I was in Oklahoma there was some improvement, but still I was not at all well.
In April, 1907, while staying with a lady who was a Christian Scientist, I read "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures." I read with avidity till I had finished the text-book, and while I knew much of it to be the truth, a great deal was as little understood as if it had been Greek. As a whole, it impressed me as a rational conception of man and his relation to an all-wise creator. I had never read anything that brought to me such intense desire to love and serve God as these words on page 481: "Like the archpriests of yore, man is free 'to enter into the holiest,'— the realm of God." I had always wanted to serve God and obey Him, but had never found the way, nor did I know how to prove to myself that God was my refuge from grief and pain; but the possibility of man's attaining to the understanding of the infinite Mind waked the heart to tender love and earnest adoration.
After reading the last page of Science and Health, I began once more at the first, determined to read the book more carefully this time, as well as more critically, and I have been reading it ever since. My first demonstration was over a severe cough. The cough ceased, but this did not then impress me as due to Christian Science. Yet when I waited for it to return and it did not, I could but wonder. At that time I was reading Science and Health carefully, but had not decided to study it or attempt to prove it to myself. Then followed a remarkable demonstration over a severe scald, and I began to study in earnest, to find out how it was done. I provided myself with the Quarterly, the Sentinel, and the Journal. While studying during the following six months I realized that the headaches were leaving me; in fact, I had had only one attack during all those months, and I have been free from them ever since. I do not now know what it is to bear pain for more than a moment at a time. In about two years poor eyesight was overcome. For twelve years I had been unable to see without glasses, but now I do all my reading and writing, day or night, without them.
