I have always appreciated and respected Mary Baker Eddy, but over the years I heard some things about her that disturbed me. For instance, her extraordinary attention to detail and high standard in the governance of her home made her seem to me overly picky. I used to think how glad I was that I never had to work in her household.
Then I read We Knew Mary Baker Eddy. The final reminiscence is by Martha Wilcox, who was one of Mrs. Eddy’s personal maids and also a Christian Science practitioner and teacher. It was her account of working for Mrs. Eddy that turned my tentative appreciation for the leader of Christian Science into a deeply felt gratitude and true affection.
One of the accounts Wilcox shared was about how Mrs. Eddy’s pincushion was maintained. Wilcox explained that the pins in Mrs. Eddy’s pincushion were ordered according to their size and had to be maintained in this state of orderliness. This meant that whenever she needed a particular pin of any given length, she didn’t have to search for it. “No one would have thought of changing a pin in her pincushion,” wrote Wilcox (We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, p. 201, 1979 ed.; p. 473, 2011 ed.).
