very profound and recondite. It was when she was returning from one of these Good Templar meetings, February 1, 1866, that Mrs. Patterson had the fall from the effects of which she says she was miraculously healed. She, with a party of fellow Templars, was passing the corner of Oxford and Market Streets, when she slipped upon the icy sidewalk and fell. She was carried into the house of Samuel Bubier, where Dr. Cushing attended her, and the next day, at her urgent request, she was moved to the house on the Swampscott Road, where she and her husband were then boarding. It was on the following day, according to Mrs. Eddy's account, that she received her revelation, and in this house Christian Science was born. In the following spring the Pattersons took a room in the house of P. R. Russell, at the corner of Pearl and High Streets, Lynn. Here, after about two months, Dr. Patterson finally left his wife, and they never lived together after this time. In referring to her husband's desertion of her, Mrs. Eddy says:
In 1862[1] my name was Patterson; my husband, Dr. Patterson, a distinguished dentist. After our marriage I was confined to my bed with a severe illness, and seldom left bed or room for seven years, when I was taken to Dr. Quimby, and partially restored. I returned home, hoping once more to make that home happy, but only returned to a new agony, to find my husband had eloped with a married woman from one of the wealthy families of that city, leaving no trace save his last letter to us, wherein he wrote "I hope some time to be worthy of so good a wife."[2]
- ↑ Letter to the Boston Post, March 7, 1883.
- ↑
From Mrs. Eddy's statement it is impossible to tell whether by "that city" she means Sanbornton Bridge, where she returned after her first visit to Quimby, or Lynn, where she joined her husband after her second visit. Neither in Lynn nor Sanbornton Bridge do the people who know the Pattersons recall any elopement on Dr. Patterson's part. P. R. Russell, in whose house the Pattersons were living when the Doctor deserted his wife, says in his affidavit:
"While they were living at my house, Dr. Patterson went away and did not return. I do not know the cause of his going. I never heard that he eloped with any woman, and I never heard Mrs. Patterson say that he had eloped with any woman. Mrs. Patterson never said anything whatever to me on the subject of her husband's departure. I never heard anything against Dr. Patterson's character either then or since."
