In the year 1903 I enrolled in a southwestern university to study for the ministry. However, four years later ill-health forced me to return to my home in Houston, Texas, and to abandon all hopes of continuing my chosen profession. As the result of a severe attack of inflammatory rheumatism I fell a victim of valvular heart, kidney trouble, and nervous prostration.
Having exhausted the skill of physicians, and after spending several months at health resorts, I again returned to my home very much disheartened and afraid, for I continually grew worse.
A loving friend, seeing my condition, persuaded me to accompany her to a Christian Science Wednesday evening testimony meeting. During the time allotted for the giving of testimonies a young man told of his healing of nervous prostration through the reading of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy. He expressed such sincere gratitude for the revelation which he received of God as Love that a sense of peace and joy such as I had never known flooded my consciousness. For years I had been an ardent student of the Bible, drilled in creeds and dogma in our classes at the university; but for the first time I realized what John meant when he said (Rev. 21:1), "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away."
