Sometimes one hears the remark: "It is not possible to read all the Christian Science periodicals. I subscribe for them, but it is not possible for any one to take the time to read them all and do it thoroughly." Mrs. Eddy frequently used illustrations from music and mathematics, and there has come to the writer an answer to the preceding statement relative to the reading, in the correlation of two experiences of her own growth.
As a child, when having in a music lesson my first instruction in the scale of C Major, I can well remember that, the playing of an octave with one hand was a matter of many stumbles and occupied many minutes, and that even after the lesson there was neither soreness nor agility. But as a Conservatory pupil, five years later, I could run several scales the full length of the keyboard with both hands in one minute, and without mistakes. The expenditure of time in hours of practice had its result in making one minute take the place of many minutes. So in later life I learned to read the Christian Science periodicals quickly and efficiently. At first one article in the Sentinel seemed to me, an unpractised reader, sufficient for one sitting. Soon, however, the reading of the entire Sentinel left me with a sense of freshness. So, when error says we cannot read so much, we may know that we only need to keep up our daily practice.
A few years ago I was attending a centennial in a city strange to me, and was seemingly misplaced in my boarding house. I had gone there because my husband had lived in the house fifteen years before, many of his former friends were still there, and it was kept by the same family. It was an old building, with dark stairways and no fire escapes, and in conversation it seemed as if all events were dated as "before the big fire" in that city, or after it, or during it. My sense of loneliness, the fear of fire, the distaste for the only available room, the preference for a hotel where other delegates would have the same interests and schedule through the week, prepared a nice little nest for error.
