It was in Paris, six years ago, that I first heard of Christian Science, and I am ashamed to have let so much time pass without expressing publicly my deep gratitude and thankfulness for the healings and help I have received. I have been protected and strengthened in every danger and difficulty since I knew about this saving truth. I always used to wear glasses and suffered from tired and painful eyes, but without any special treatment this trouble was overcome, and after forgetting my glasses a few times I suddenly found I did not need them any more.
My first-healing came about in this way. Ever since a serious operation many years ago, I had suffered from time to time from an internal trouble, and the climax came in Paris, when I was studying there all alone. I was obliged to give up work and go to bed. Then I sent for a specialist, who told me I was suffering from an internal abscess and that an operation was absolutely necessary. I asked if there was no way out,—no treatment or rest cure possible,—but he said none whatever. After leaving me with various remedies and with instructions to keep perfectly still, he came back in a week and gave the same verdict. There was nothing to do but face with dread the inevitable, so I engaged a bed in a nursing home in England and sent for a friend to travel with me, as I felt much too weak to go alone.
Thus at the eleventh hour Christian Science found me! The mother of one of my friends in the studio came to call and very sympathetically told me that I could be helped by Christian Science. I laughed and said that I was afraid I was beyond that help, as I had to have an operation at once. After further conversation I asked, but without much interest, who the practitioners were in Paris, and she gave me a list, ending with herself. This astonished me so much that I said, "I think you had better give me a treatment at once;" but two thoughts were uppermost in my mind,—one that I need never confess it to anybody, and the other that Christian Science could not do any harm even if it did no good. My friend demurred and offered to send me books to read first, but I insisted, so finally the treatment was given. The books were sent to me the same evening and as I read them with joy and wonder, I realized that I was healed! I could hardly sleep that night for happiness; the relief of it all, the certainty that I had finished with doctors and operations forever, the knowledge that God does not send illness, filled my mind to overflowing. The next day I got up and dressed. The friend who was to take me to England arrived that morning and had to accept my explanation that I was well and on the road to complete recovery. We spent all day enjoying Paris and the Bois and did not come back home till ten o'clock that night—this after a month in bed!
