after Mrs. Eddy adopted Dr. Foster, Mrs. Stetson took a young man from Maine, Carol Norton, to occupy a somewhat similar position in her household, although she did not legally adopt him. When Mrs. Eddy heard of this, she exclaimed with vexation, "See how Stetson apes me!" She also made a new by-law forbidding "illegal adoption."[1]
This was the situation when Mrs. Eddy suddenly left Boston, driven from home, so she declared, by malicious mesmerism. The fear of it had for a long time completely dominated her, and it was now interfering seriously with her work in the college and church. She spent her time in talking about it; in treating and fighting against it, and in discovering and thwarting imaginary plots. She felt it reaching out to her, not only from her enemies, but from her most trusted students and friends. She believed she could see it in their faces. As she once bitterly remarked to Mrs. Hopkins, "You are so full of mesmerism that your eyes stick out like a boiled codfish's."
She had never loved any one so well that she could not, in a moment of irritation, believe him guilty, not only of disloyalty, but of theft, knavery, blackmail, or abominable corruption. She could never feel sure of even the ordinary decencies of conduct in her friends. All the suspicion, envy, and incontinent distrust which so often blazed in Mrs. Eddy's eyes seemed to have found a concrete and corporeal expression in this thing, Mesmerism.
The delusion of persecution grew upon her, and she believed that she was watched and spied upon. Her mail, her clothes,
- ↑ Illegal Adoption. Sect. 3. No person shall be a member of this church who claims a spiritually adopted child; or a spiritually adopted husband or wife. There must be legal adoption or legal marriage, which can be verified according to the laws of our land.—Church Manual, 1904.
