When Cosmopolitan published Mary Baker Eddy

This month's editorial by Heloísa Rivas, telling of her octogenarian father, brought to mind a statement the editors of Cosmopolitan made in Novermber 1907 about Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of this magazine. A lawsuit that had been brought against Mrs. Eddy—questioning her mental and physical capacities at age 87 to govern her own affairs—had just collapsed. At that time, Cosmopolitan, then very much a family magazine, was publishing a piece by Mrs. Eddy on "Youth and Young Manhood." At right, in their "Editor's Note," the Cosmopolitan editors explained that they made the unusual decision to reproduce a facsimile of Mrs. Eddy's manuscript, with edits in her own hand, "as an interesting and remarkable proof of Mrs. Eddy's ability in old age to vindicate in her own person the value of her teachings." We've reproduced their editor's note. The facsimile appears on page 54. (Both the editorial comment and the full text of Mrs. Eddy's article are reprinted, with slight changes, in The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, pages 272–274.) The copy of Cosmopolitan is courtesy of The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity.