Having been educated in Germany, whose educational system had been planned for the strengthening of autocracy, and suffering from the effects of this false education, I, like the prodigal son, had taken my "portion of goods" and had come to the United States, and there wasted my substance in riotous living; to find myself in sore want, unable to understand the fundamentals of the country, gradually sinking deeper and deeper. I had been trained to think autocracy and consequently could not understand democracy and its institutions. I seemed to be continuously in some sort of trouble, conflicting here and there, and finally broke down mentally and physically.
For a number of years I tried various remedies but without any result; instead, the condition grew gradually worse with no prospect of relief and I was friendless in a strange country which I could not understand. At that time I was living in a construction camp in the high Sierras, and one afternoon while suffering severely the thought came to me, Try Christian Science. Now here I wish to emphasize that I had scarcely ever heard about Christian Science. I had never discussed it nor ever read anything about it except the headlines of the daily press at that time, attacking Christian Science and its Discoverer, Mary Baker Eddy. That very same evening I was seized with an attack of some sort, which I thought would result fatally, and asked for some assistance from some of the employees. In response to my request, the wife of one of the workers came to the cabin I was living in, and to my great surprise handed me a copy of The Christian Science Journal and the Sentinel, asking me to read them, at the same time reassuring me and helping me a great deal, so that I was able to sleep quietly that night. After that I gave Christian Science no more thought and weeks later my condition grew so bad that I had to give up my work.
Several weeks of treatment from a well-known physician followed but did not result in improvement. As I was about to give up all hope of recovery, again Christian Science was mentioned to me with the result that I procured a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy and commenced the study of this book earnestly. With the kind assistance of a practitioner I was helped physically and the desire for intoxicants, tobacco, tea and coffee, which I had indulged in freely all my life, disappeared without any seeming effort on my part. I did not understand anything whatever of what I was studying, but the one fact stood out, that I would have to be a better man if I wanted to enjoy better health and so I started on this work and kept the goal before me continuously.
