When a child of twelve years, I was baptized and admitted to membership in an orthodox church in a small college town. The same year I heard Christian Science mentioned in a general discussion.
A few years later I asked a friend if she knew what Christian Science was. She told me their neighbors were having Science treatment for their little girl, who was lame, one of her legs being considerably shorter than the other. I asked what Christian Science treatment meant, and what she told me interested me. Then I went to one of the Readers of the Christian Science church in the community and inquired about it. During the conversation I asked what a Christian Scientist would think if I said I had a severe headache. I was told that a student of Christian Science would think the same as I would if a child told me that four and three is six. I could not admit the similarity of the examples, feeling the illness to be a reality and the other a mistake.
For a time I scoffed at Christian Science, but it persistently remained in my thought, until I met a friend whom I found to be a Christian Scientist. She lent me her textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy. I read it through hungrily, not stopping to sleep at all the first night, and scarcely eating or sleeping until I had finished it. It answered all my questions. Then I fell ill with a fever. My friend helped me, and at times I could recall statements of the truth from the wonderful book I had read. In a short time I was well. A few days later I discovered that I was working without glasses, and felt no need of them, although I had worn them constantly for years; also, that I had been healed of a growth in the rectum, a condition which has not returned.
