house who felt that something was being planned from which they were to be excluded. The P. M. society met but twice, but so widely was its existence discussed that Mrs. Eddy was obliged four years later to write an account of its deliberations. She related that the meetings had considered two topics, first, “There is no Animal Magnetism;” second, “God is all; there is none beside Him.” These topics were given out without instructions and the students who joined in the meeting were expected to quietly treat the disharmony in their midst.
“If harm could come from the consideration of these two topics,” Mrs. Eddy wrote, “it was because of the misconception of those subjects in the minds that handled them. … I dissolved the society and we have not met since.”[1]
In April Mrs. Eddy decided that she herself would go in response to the increasingly urgent call from the West. She handed over the charge of the Journal to Mrs. Hopkins, arranged for a suspension of her Thursday night lectures, and provided for certain of her students to fill the pulpit during her absence. Class work in the college was likewise suspended. The arrangements for the journey were left to Mr. Frye, who was to travel with her as secretary while Mrs. Sarah Crosse attended her as a companion. She spent a month in Chicago teaching a class in a private house on the West Side. Double parlors were taken for the class work, beside the suite of rooms engaged for her party.
Students came from towns outside of Chicago as
- ↑ “Miscellaneous Writings,” p. 350.
