When I was a small child, I sat one evening on the front steps of my parents' home grieving for a brother who was seriously ill. Two women passed by, and one of them remarked: "This is where the —family lives. Someone is always ill there." This remark so disturbed me that I vowed that when I grew up no one would ever have an opportunity to make such a remark about my family. Some years later a means of living up to my vow was presented when I began attending the Christian Science Sunday School.
Soon after purchasing my first copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy I made my first demonstration. I arose one morning with both eyes badly inflamed and almost swollen shut. Although I could scarcely see, I began reading the textbook. Suddenly my attention was held by the statement (p. 393), "Have no fear that matter can ache, swell, or be inflamed as the result of a law of any kind, when it is self-evident that matter can have no pain nor inflammation." The eyes were instantaneously healed.
While a freshman in college I became ill and called a practitioner, who began work immediately. I was living in a house with a group of girls, so it was necessary in order to conform to campus regulations to call a doctor. He said that I was too far along the road to recovery for him to be sure, but from all indications I had had a ruptured appendix.
