Annie Knott probably was happy just to have a seat in Chicago's Central Music Hall on June 14, 1888. Along with Susan B. Anthony and about 4,000 others, from devoted to simply curious listeners that day, she heard Mary Baker Eddy speak extemporaneously on "Science and the Senses." "To me," she later recalled, the talk "was wonderful beyond words...." Less than a year later, Mrs. Eddy wrote to Mrs. Knott: "I was pleased to hear from you and of your progress for the ministry. There are several Churches that will be soon wanting a speaker. Shall I give them your name?" L04741. Mary Baker Eddy to Annie M. Knott, February 5, 1889, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection, The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity. All other quotations from the reminiscences of Annie M. Knott, The Mary Baker Eddy Collection . Ten years later, Annie Knott was one of two women named to the newly created Christian Science Board of Lectureship. Her first year as a lecturer would fall well short of conspicuous success.
The following year, Mrs. Eddy asked Knott how the lecture work was going. "...I told her I had had very few calls up to that time." Knott later remembered how friends had told her that "...people in general preferred to have a man lecture for them...." Mrs. Eddy responded by saying that it wouldn't do "to let that argument stand," adding, "You must rise to the altitude of true womanhood, and then the whole world will want you as it wants Mother [the endearing title that Christian Scientists used for the movement's Founder]." Soon after, the calls to lecture began to flow in and Knott accepted them, to prove that "woman can declare the truth and heal the sick as well as a man."
Knott learned to listen with her spiritual senses, and to adapt. She arrived in Salt Lake City during a lecture tour to learn that a hypnotist was in town giving a series of talks, and "instructing people how to get control of others' thoughts." Knott went to the theatre where she was to speak, but after she'd begun her talk, she felt moved to change what she was saying. "A few months before that time Mrs. Eddy had told me to depend more on what God gave me at the time of a lecture than on what was 'manufactured,' and I did on this occasion. I left my regular text and went on to make a sharp and clear distinction between Christian Science and hypnotism.... without personal criticism of those who believed in mesmerism or hypnotism." She later learned that the hypnotist had been in her audience, and had intended to prove that he could influence the speaker through hypnotic suggestion.
