leader and her special teacher. . . . She has tried to answer this charge of the adoption of Quimby's ideas, and called me in to counsel her about it; but her only answer (in print!) was that if she said such things twenty years ago, she must have been under the influence of Animal Magnetism.
Mrs. Eddy, however, issued the following challenge:
To whom it may concern:
Mr. George A. Quimby son of the late Phineas P. Quimby, over his own signature and before witnesses, stated in 1883, that he had in his possession at that time all the manuscript that had been written by his father. And I hereby declare that to expose the falsehood of parties publicly intimating that I have appropriated matter belonging to the aforesaid Quimby, I will pay the cost of printing and publishing the first edition of those manuscripts with the author's name:
Provided, that I am allowed first to examine said manuscripts, and do find that they were his own compositions, and not mine, that were left with him many years ago, or that they have not since his death, in 1865, been stolen from my published works. Also that I am given the right to bring out this one edition under the copyright of the owner of said manuscripts, and all the money accruing from the sales of said book shall be paid to said owner. Some of his purported writings, quoted by Mr. D——, were my own words as near as I can recollect them.
There is a great demand for my work, "Science and Health, with Key to Scriptures," hence Mr. D——'s excuse for the delay to publish Quimby's manuscripts namely, that this period is not sufficiently enlightened to be benefited by them (?) is lost, for if I have copied from Quimby, and my book is accepted, it has created a demand for his.
Mary Baker G. Eddy.
This proposition was ignored by Mr. Quimby, owing to his own knowledge of Mrs. Eddy and of his father's manuscripts. Quimby's adherents declare that the provisions made in her offer indicate what her claims would have been if the manuscripts had been given into her hands—as she had already announced that Dr. Quimby's writings were her own—and that the proposition was made with the object of securing possession of the manuscripts.
