With Mrs. Eddy’s own gentleness of characterization and generosity of appreciation, Mr. Wiggin may fall into his rightful place in the story of her life as an aid and not a marplot, and his memory need not be stigmatized with the reproach of literary caddishness.
During the summer of 1888 Mrs. Eddy spent a few weeks in Fabyans, New Hampshire, at the White Mountain House. Her student, Mrs. Janette E. Weller, traveled with her. She gave an informal address at the Fabyan House to the summer guests, who gathered from various resorts in the mountains when they learned that she was sojourning a few days at this hotel. She afterward withdrew with her secretary and traveling companion to the farm of Ira O. Knapp for absolute retirement. She had just closed an eventful year in which she had formulated the subject matter
that might seem ambiguous to the reader. Mr. Calvin A. Frye copied my writings, and he will tell you that Mr. Wiggin left my diction quite out of the question, sometimes saying, “I would n’t express it that way.” He often dissented from what I had written, but I quieted him by quoting corroborative texts of Scripture.
In Christian Science my diction has been called original. The liberty that I have taken with capitalization in order to express the “new tongue” has well nigh constituted a new style of language. In almost every case where Mr. Wiggin added words, I have erased them in my revisions.
Mr. Wiggin was not my proof-reader for my book, “Miscellaneous Writings,” and for only two of my books. I especially employed him on “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” because at that date some critics declared that my book was as ungrammatical as it was misleading. I availed myself of the name of the former proof-reader for the University Press, Cambridge, to defend my grammatical construction, and confidently awaited the years to declare the moral and spiritual effect upon the age of “Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.” … I hold the late Mr. Wiggin in loving and grateful memory for his high-principled character and well-equipped scholarship. Mary Baker Eddy.
Pleasant View, Concord, New Hampshire, Nov. 20, 1906.— Statement printed in the “New York American,” November 22, 1906.
