It has seemed, on reading over this page of last month's Journal, that it was a singular omission on our part to leave out in our prospectus and notes, the mention of the remarkable growth of the Journal of Christian Science under the editorship of its founder Mrs. Eddy, who started the paper at the request of her students, single handed and alone, to lead its untried steps upon Puritan, conservative soil, alongside haughty contemporaries,—to double, treble, quadruple its subscribers and exchanges in a single year.
By some misunderstanding of the Secretary's report, the statement of the Journal's subscription list was greatly underestimated, many of the students' names upon the books each representing from five to twenty subscribers not mentioned, whose papers are sent to the students' addresses and not directly to the subscribers themselves.
One English scientific society ordered a hundred copies at once for circulation among its members, and the number of copies sold to casual buyers has run the circulation to from one thousand to two or three thousand at many single issues.
Perhaps it were well also to correct the impression that seems to have been left upon our readers, that the appeal for aid in behalf of the Journal was made at the request of Mrs. Eddy herself, who never appealed for anything but to temporarily relieve her of all care of the publication till she could resume it without interfering with more important work on hand.
We had some natural fear lest the paper, so beloved for its founder's sake, should lose somewhat of its favor under the unaccustomed direction of the new management, and made appeal to fellow students to sustain us in the ordeal.
Mrs. Eddy's words in a private note express most truly the actual situation of affairs: "I knew nothing of the publisher's intention of informing the people of our need, well assured that a little effort on the part of those interested in circulating our paper would quickly inform the people of their need of the Journal."
The whole blame of misunderstanding lies with "ye editor" pro tem, who should have more critically examined reports, and who will hereafter try to be more circumspect in her renderings of statistics, etc.
Many thanks for the corrections handed in by former managers.
