Quimby, some critics have tried to make out that she was not cured by him. The recurrence of weakness seems to confirm this. Mrs. Eddy several times wrote for absent healing, and on one occasion felt it necessary to return to Portland for treatment. She frankly confessed that she had temporary recurrences of former troubles. But the critics who make this charge overlook the fact that she was at the point of death when she first went to Portland, and the fact that she was brought out of that condition so that she could walk, as she herself says in her communication to the Courier, unaided after only a week's treatment; and that Dr. Quimby gave her the therapeutic impetus and the wisdom which carried her through to the point where she herself began to understand and to demonstrate.
SONNET.
Suggested by Reading the Remarkable Cure of Captain F. W. Deering[1]
For the Courier.
TO DR. P. P. QUIMBY
'Mid light of science sits the sage profound,
Awing with classics and his starry lore,
Climbing to Venus, chasing Saturn round,
Turning his mystic pages o'er and o'er,
Till, from empyrean space, his wearied sight
Turns to the oasis on which to gaze.
More bright than glitters on the brow of night
The self-taught man walking in wisdom's ways.
Then paused the captive gaze with peace entwined,
And sight was satisfied with thee to dwell;
But not in classics could the book-worm find
That law of excellence whence came the spell
Potent o'er all,—the captive to unbind.
To heal the sick and faint, the halt and blind.
Mary M. Patterson.
The confessions of weakness were evidences of the regenerative work in process, as she realizes when it comes to her that to see the great new truth and to live by it consciously are two different things. For the mere restoration to physical health was only the beginning. There remained the great problem of a temperament which made her unduly aware of the ills and feelings of others. The problem of one's temperament is not to be solved in a week. Hence
- ↑ Printed from the original manuscript preserved by George A. Quimby. See Appendix.
