The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 13

by Georgine Milmine

CHAPTER XIII

THE "CONSPIRACY TO MURDER" CASE—ARREST OF EDDY AND ARENS ON A SENSATIONAL CHARGE—HEARING IN COURT—DISCHARGE OF THE DEFENDANTS

From 1877 to 1879 Mrs. Eddy was in the law-courts so frequently that the Boston newspapers began to feature her litigations and to refer to them and to her with disrespectful jocularity.

In March, 1877, George W. Barry,^[1] one of her students, brought his suit against Mrs. Eddy for twenty-seven hundred dollars for services rendered her in copying the manuscript of Science and Health, attending to her business, storing her goods, putting down her carpets, working in her garden, and paying out money for her on various accounts. This suit dragged on until October, 1879, when it was decided in Barry's favour, the referee awarding him three hundred and ninety-five dollars and forty cents, with interest from the date of his writ.

In February of 1878, Mrs. Eddy brought suit against Richard Kennedy in the Municipal Court of Suffolk County to recover seven hundred and fifty dollars upon a promissory note which bore the date February, 1870, several months previous to the date upon which Mrs. Eddy and Kennedy went to Lynn to practise, and which read as follows:

February, 1870. 

In consideration of two years' instruction in healing the sick, I hereby agree to pay Mary M. B. Glover, one thousand dollars in quarterly instalments of fifty dollars commencing from this date.

(Signed) Richard Kennedy. 

Mr. Kennedy admitted having signed the note, but testified that when Mrs. Eddy asked him to do so she said that she would never collect it, and that she wanted the paper simply to show to prospective students to convince them of the monetary value of her instruction. He further testified that though, when he signed the note, he had been studying with Mrs. Glover-Eddy for two years, he believed at the time that she was withholding from him the final and most illuminating secrets of her Science, and that he had reason to believe that, if he complied with her request in regard to the note, she would disclose them to him.

In his answer he stated that Mrs. Eddy had "obtained the promissory note declared on by pretending that she had important secrets relating to healing the sick which she had not theretofore imparted to defendant, and which she promised to impart after the making and delivery to her of said note, and she then had no such secrets and never afterward undertook to impart or imparted such secrets."

The Municipal Court awarded judgment for the plaintiff of seven hundred and sixty-eight dollars and sixty-three cents, but the case was carried to the Superior Court and tried before a jury, which returned a verdict for Mr. Kennedy.

In April, 1878, came Mrs. Eddy's suit against George H. Tuttle and Charles S. Stanley, two of her earliest students, to discover the amount of their practice and to recover a royalty thereon, which was decided in favour of the defendants.^[2]

In April, 1878, Mrs. Eddy brought her action against Daniel Spofford to discover the amount of his practice and to recover royalty thereon. Her original idea was to collect a royalty from all her practising students, which arrangement, could she have held them to it, would, in time, have been very remunerative. This case was dismissed for insufficient service.

In May of the same year came the witchcraft case, Brown vs. Spofford, of which Mrs. Eddy was the instigator, and in which she represented the plaintiff in court.

These lawsuits reached a sensational climax when, in October, 1878, Asa Gilbert Eddy and Edward J. Arens were arrested on the charge of conspiracy to murder Daniel H. Spofford.

It will be remembered that Mr. Spofford had been one of the most earnest and trusted of Mrs. Eddy's students. She had permitted him to assist in her teaching, had given him the pen with which Science and Health was written, and had intrusted to him the sale of her book. She seems at one time even to have considered the possibility of his being her successor.

In a letter dated October 1, 1876, she writes:

My joy at having one living student after these dozen years of struggle, toil and defeat, you at present cannot understand, but will know at a future time when the whole labour is left with you. . . . The students make all their mistakes leaning on me, or working against me. You are not going to do either, and certainly the result will follow that you will be faithful over a few things and be made ruler over many.

She continually consulted Mr. Spofford in the preparation of the second edition of Science and Health (the little book which was eventually converted into an intermittent attack upon him), and in a letter written several weeks after the above she says:

Lynn, Oct. 22, '76. 

Dr. Spofford—

Dear Student—Your interesting letter just read. I am in a condition to feel all and more than all you said. The mercury of my mind is rising as the world's temperature of thought heats up and the little book "sweet in the mouth" but severe and glorious in its proof, is about to go forth like Noah's dove over the troubled waves of doubt, infidelity and bigotry, to find if possible a foothold on earth. . . . I have great consolation in you, in your Christian character that I read yet more and more, the zeal that should attend the saints, and the patient waiting for our Lord's coming.

Press on; You know not the smallest portion, comparatively, of your ability in science. . . . Inflammation of the spinal nerves are what I suffer most in belief.^[3]

There was no middle ground with Mrs. Eddy, and it was her policy to strike before she could be struck. After her disagreement with Mr. Spofford concerning his disposition of the money he had received from the sale of her book, she denounced him as an enemy to truth, had her students begin to treat against him, expelled him from the Christian Scientists' Association, tried to induce the county papers to publish attacks upon him, and launched two lawsuits at him within a month of each other. Mrs. Eddy and her husband gave such wide circulation to the charge that Mr. Spofford had been dishonest in regard to the sale of the book, that the publishers of the book felt called upon to publish the following statement:

TO THE PUBLIC

Having heard certain malicious statements concerning our business transactions with Dr. D. H. Spofford of Newburyport, we, the undersigned, original publishers of "Science and Health," written by Mary Baker Glover of Lynn, in justice to him desire to correct them. He settled with us July 25th, 1877, paying several hundred dollars cash and giving notes (which were promptly taken up when due) for the further amount of his indebtedness. His account had been carefully examined by counsel and found correct and satisfactory. We desire to STOP the untruths which some person or persons have set afloat.

George W. Barry,

E. M. Newhall, Jan. 21st, 1878.

Mrs. Eddy was now convinced that Spofford was a mesmerist and openly denounced him as a malpractitioner.^[4] Her students had orders to discredit him as widely as possible, and Mr. Spofford soon began to see the result of their efforts in the falling off of his practice. It was Mr. Arens' practice which Mrs. Eddy was now endeavouring to build up.

Edward J. Arens was a Prussian who had come to Lynn as a young man, where he worked as a carpenter until he was able to open a cabinet-making shop. He was a good workman, but was not particularly successful in his business, and was frequently involved in litigation. Although his educational opportunities had been limited, he had an active mind. He read a great deal, was restless, eager, and ambitious. When he be came a student of Mrs. Eddy's, he gave up his cabinet business and, naturally hot-headed and impulsive, he threw himself into metaphysical healing with great enthusiasm. He came to Mrs. Eddy's succour in a critical hour, when she desperately needed a man who could devote himself effectively to her cause. Mr. Eddy had never been a man of much initiative, and his terror of mesmerism had cowed him beyond his natural docility.

By this time Mrs. Eddy's hatred for Mr. Spofford had reached the acute stage, where it kept her walking the floor at night, declaring that Spofford's mind was pursuing and bullying hers, and that she could not shake it off. Mr. Eddy, a helpless spectator of his wife's misery, used to declare that the man ought to be punished for persecuting her, and believed that Mr. Spofford's mind was on their track night and day, seeking to break down Mrs. Eddy's health, to get their property away from them, and to overthrow the movement. Mr. Spofford, on the other hand, was scarcely less distraught. He still believed that Mrs. Eddy had brought him the great truth of his life, and that, however unworthy, she had a divine message. He felt his separation from her deeply, and was amazed and terrified by her vindictiveness. He feared that Mrs. Eddy would not stop until she had entirely destroyed his practice, and he never knew what weapon she would use against him next. Only a state of panic on both sides can explain the developments of the autumn of 1878.

One morning early in October a heavy-set, rather brutal-looking man knocked at the door of Mr. Spofford's Boston office, Number 297 Tremont Street, and said he wanted to see the Doctor. Mr. Spofford glanced at the man and, thinking he was not the sort of person who would be likely to consult a mental healer, asked him if he were sure that he had come to the right kind of a doctor. The man introduced himself as James L. Sargent, a saloon-keeper, took from his pocket a card which Mr. Spofford had left on the door of his Newburyport office, and, pointing to the name on it, said that was the doctor he had come to see. After taking a seat in the consulting-room, Sargent asked Mr. Spofford whether he knew two men named Miller and Libby. Mr. Spofford replied that he did not.

"Well, they know you," insisted Sargent, "and they want to get you put out of the way. Miller, the young man, says you are going with the old man's daughter and he wants to marry her himself." Sargent went on to explain that these two men had offered him five hundred dollars to put Mr. Spofford out of the way and had paid him seventy-five dollars in advance. He declared that, while he meant to get all the money he could out of it, he had no intention of risking his neck, and said that he had already notified State Detective Hollis C. Pinkham and had asked him to watch the case.

Mr. Spofford immediately called upon Pinkham and found that Sargent had told him the same story. Pinkham said, however, that he had paid very little attention to the story, as Sargent had a criminal record, and he had thought that the man was up to some game to square himself with the Police Department. He promised to look into the matter more carefully, and Mr. Spofford went away.

Several days later Sargent came in and said that Miller and Libby were pressing him. He had gone to them for more money, assuring them that Mr. Spofford was already dead, but they had sent a young man to Spofford's office to investigate, and accused Sargent of playing them false.

Mr. Spofford was now thoroughly alarmed. Sargent suggested that he accompany him to his (Sargent's) brother's house at Cambridgeport and conceal himself there while he (Sargent) tried to collect the money promised him by Miller and Libby. Mr. Spofford consulted with Detective Pinkham and then disappeared. Sargent, so he later declared in court, informed Miller and Libby, whom he identified as Edward J. Arens and Asa Gilbert Eddy, that he had disposed of Mr. Spofford, whereupon he received a part of the money promised him. Mr. Spofford left Boston Tuesday, October 15th, and remained about two weeks at the house of Sargent's sister-in-law. Sargent had promised to come out and give him news of the case, but as he failed to do so, Mr. Spofford then returned to Boston, going first to his brother's store in Lawrence. In the meantime his friends had been greatly alarmed at his disappearance, had advertised him as missing, and had published a description of him in the Boston papers.

On October 29th Edward J. Arens and Asa G. Eddy were arrested and held in three thousand dollars bail for examination in the Municipal Court on November 7th.

Photograph by H. S. Dunshee	Photograph by Kendall
DANIEL H. SPOFFORD	EDWARD J. ARENS

As Mrs. Eddy afterward indignantly wrote, "the principal witnesses for the prosecution were convicts and inmates of houses of ill fame in Boston." A motley array of witnesses, certainly, confronted the judge when the Municipal Court convened on the afternoon of November 7th. Sargent was a bartender with a criminal record. George Collier, his friend, was, at that time, under bonds, waiting trial on several most unsavoury charges. Laura Sargent, the sister of James Sargent, who kept a disorderly house at Number 7 Bowker Street, appeared with several of her girls, all vividly got up for the occasion and ingenuously pleased at coming into court in the dignified rôle of witnesses for the Commonwealth. Mr. H. W. Chaplin appeared for the prosecution, and Russell H. Conwell appeared for the defendants. Mr. Chaplin briefly opened the case for the Government, contending that he should be able to prove directly that the defendants had conspired to take the life of Mr. Spofford, and that Sargent had been paid upwards of two hundred dollars toward the five hundred dollars due him for the job. The evidence adduced at the hearing was in substance as follows:

James L. Sargent testified that he was a saloon-keeper in Sudbury Street,^[5] that he had become acquainted four months before with a man who called himself "Miller," but whom he recognised as the defendant, Arens; that Miller, or Arens, came to his saloon to tell fortunes; that Arens had told him he knew of a good job where three or four hundred dollars could be made; that he, Sargent, inquired about the job, and Arens asked him if he could be depended on; that Sargent assured him on that point, and Arens then told him that he wanted a man "licked," and "he wanted him licked so that he wouldn't come to again."

I told him [said Sargent] that I was just the man for him, and Arens said the old man [Libby] would not pay out more than was absolutely necessary to get the job done, as he had already been beaten out of seventy-five dollars. I met Arens the following Saturday at the corner of Charles and Leverett streets at five o'clock, and we walked down Charles Street into an alleyway. He said Libby was not satisfied and wanted to see me himself. . . . We selected a spot in a freight-yard where he and the old man [Libby] would meet me in half an hour. In the meantime, fearing that the affair might be a plot of some kind against myself, I borrowed a revolver of a friend and got another friend named Collier to go with me. Collier secreted himself in a freight-car with the door partially opened, so that he could overhear any conversation, and at the appointed time I met Arens and a man who was known to me as "Libby," but whom I recognise as the defendant, Eddy. . . . Eddy asked me how much money I wanted to do the job, and I told him I ought to have one hundred dollars to start with. He asked if I would take seventy-five dollars at the outset, and I said I would. He wanted to know if I would be square, and I told him yes. He then said he had but thirty-five dollars with him that night, which he would give me, and would send the remainder by Arens on the following Monday. I told him no, I must have the whole at that time. Just then a man came walking down the freight-yards, and Arens told me in a quick tone to meet him Monday morning. I did so, and Arens passed me seventy-five dollars. . . . A few days later I met Arens again, and he said he would bring me directions where to find Dr. Spofford. He gave me an advertisement, clipped from some newspaper, giving the days when I could find Dr. Spofford at his offices in Haverhill and Newburyport.

After telling in detail of his own delay in following instructions and of spending the money and putting Arens off, Sargent's testimony continued:

We went to the Hotel Tremont, and Arens gave me sixteen dollars, with which I went to the Doctor's office in Newburyport. I did not see the Doctor, but brought away one of his business cards; came back and called at Dr. Spofford's office and had a conversation with him. I afterward met Arens on the Common by appointment, and told him I had made arrangements to have the Doctor go out of town. . . . In a few days he met me on the Common again. He said I was playing it on him and that the whole thing was a put-up job, for Dr. Spofford was in his office. He had sent a boy to find out.

Sargent said he met Arens several times after that, and finally they agreed that Sargent should take Spofford into the country on the pretence that he had a sick child. He took the Doctor to his brother's in Cambridgeport and kept him there about two weeks. The fact that Spofford had disappeared was published in the papers. Sargent said he had met Arens after that, and told him that he had made away with the Doctor, and that he had done it about half-past seven in the evening. Sargent said that Arens replied that he had known this—that he had felt it, and had a way of telling such things that other people knew nothing of.

He saw him several times afterward, and finally Arens agreed to pay him some money. They met in Lynn on Monday, after the disappearance of Spofford. Mr. Eddy was also there, and Arens paid the witness twenty dollars.

Their plan, Sargent said, had been to take Spofford out on some lonely road and have him knocked in the head with a billy, afterward causing the horse to run away, first entangling the body with the harness, so it would appear that death was caused by accident.

Another witness was Jessie Macdonald, who had lived as housekeeper with Mr. and Mrs. Eddy eight months. She had never seen Spofford, but she had heard Mr. Eddy say that Spofford kept Mrs. Eddy in agony, and that he would be glad if Spofford were out of the way. She had heard Mrs. Eddy read a chapter from the Old Testament which says that all wicked people should be destroyed.

James Kelly testified to holding a conversation with Sargent, who told him of the job he had on hand.

John Smith, Sargent's bartender, testified that he saw Arens in Sargent's saloon four times.

Laura Sargent, James Sargent's sister, who kept a house of ill-fame in Bowker Street, testified that Sargent had a room in her house, and that Arens had come there three or four times to see him; also that Sargent had given her seventy-five dollars to keep for him, saying he was going away to his brother's in Cambridgeport.

Hollis C. Pinkham, the detective employed on the case, said that Sargent had laid the case before him, and that he had told Sargent to go ahead and find out what he could; that he had seen Sargent and Arens together in conversation on the Common; that he had followed Eddy to his home in Lynn, and had seen Sargent go toward the door of Eddy's house there; that he had asked Eddy if he had arranged to put Spofford out of the way; that Eddy had denied having been in Sargent's saloon or meeting him in a freight-yard; that Arens had maintained he had never seen or known Sargent, even when confronted with Sargent.

Detective Chase Philbrick, also employed on the case, testified to seeing Sargent at Eddy's house in Lynn; saw him try to get in, but fail to do so. He corroborated the evidence of Pinkham.

George A. Collier, a carpenter, was an important witness. He said he worked in Sargent's saloon when he was out of a job, and told of going with Sargent to the freight-house and concealing himself in an empty car, leaving the door ajar, so that he might hear a conversation between Sargent and another man. He corroborated Sargent's testimony as to what transpired.

This closed the case for the Government. The defence offered no evidence, as this was a case where only probable cause for suspicion was to be shown, and it was then to go to a higher court. Mr. Conwell, counsel for the defendants, did not indicate what line the defence would take.

Counsel for the Government submitted no argument, but called the attention of the court to the chain of circumstances which had been brought out by the evidence, and which he believed was strong enough to justify holding the defendants.

Judge May remarked that the case was a very anomalous one, but that there was, in his opinion, sufficient evidence to show that the parties should be held to appear before the Superior Court. He therefore fixed the amount of bail at three thousand dollars each for the appearance of the defendants at the December term of the Superior Court.

The case was called in the Superior Court in December, 1878, and an indictment was found on two counts.^[6]

The Superior Court record reads:

This indictment was found and returned into Court by the Grand Jurors at the last December term, when the said Arens and Eddy were severally set at the bar and having said indictment read to them, they severally said thereof that they were not guilty.

This indictment was thence continued to the present January term, and now the District Attorney, Oliver Stevens, Esquire, says he will prosecute this indictment no further, on payment of costs, which are thereupon paid. And the said Arens and Eddy are thereupon discharged. January 31, 1879.

There is no memorandum filed with the papers in the case to show the reason for the nol. pros., and a letter of inquiry sent July, 1905, to the late Oliver Stevens, the District Attorney, elicited the reply that he had kept no data concerning the case, and the circumstances which caused him to enter a nol. pros. had gone from his mind.

On October 9th, six days before Mr. Spofford fled to Cambridgeport, he received a letter from Mrs. Eddy, dated from Number 8 Broad Street, Lynn. It read as follows:

Dear Student,

Won't you make up your mind before it is forever too late to stop sinning with your eyes wide open? I pray for you that God will influence your thoughts to better issues and make you a good and great man, and spare you the penalty that must come if you do not forsake sin.

I am ready at any time to welcome you back, and kill for you the fatted calf, that is, destroy in my own breast the great material error of rendering evil for evil or resenting the wrongs done us. I do not cherish this purpose toward any one. I am too selfish to do myself this great injury. I want you to be good and happy in being good for you never can be happy without it. I rebuke error only to destroy it not to harm you, but to do you good. Whenever a straying student returns to duty, stops his evil practice or sin against the Holy Ghost, I am ready to say, "neither do I condemn thee, go and sin no more." I write you at this time only from a sense of the high and holy privilege of charity, the greatest of all graces. Do not mistake my motive, I am not worldly selfish in doing this, but am only desirous to do you good. Your silent arguments to do me harm have done me the greatest possible good; the wrath of man has praised Thee. In order to meet the emergency, Truth has lifted me above my former self, enabled me to know who is using this argument and when and what is being spoken, and knowing this, what is said in secret is proclaimed on the house top and affects me no more than for you to say it to me audibly, and tell me I have so and so; and to hate my husband; that I feel others; that arguments cannot do good; that Mrs. Rice cannot; that my husband cannot, etc., etc. I have now no need of human aid. God has shut the mouth of the lions. The scare disappears when you know another is saying it and that the error is not your own.

May God save you from the effects of the very sins you are committing and which you have been and will be the victim of when the measure you are meting shall be measured to you. Pause, think, solemnly and selfishly of the cost to you. Love instead of hate your friends, and enemies even. This alone can make you happy and draw down blessings infinite.

Have I been your friend? Have I taught you faithfully the way of happiness? and rebuked sternly that which could turn you out of that way? If I have, then I was your friend and risked much to do you good. May God govern your resolves to do right from this hour and strengthen you to keep them. Adieu,

M. B. Glover Eddy. 

In the 1881 edition of Science and Health Mrs. Eddy takes up this conspiracy case at length, giving a careful and detailed explanation of it.^[7] In her exposition she quotes this letter as a proof of the fact that she was still trying to reclaim Mr. Spofford when the conspiracy was invented. Mr. Spofford, on the other hand, since he had not heard from Mrs. Eddy for seventeen months, believed that Mrs. Eddy intended this letter should be found in his mail-box after his disappearance, to avert suspicion from her.

In her exposition of the case Mrs. Eddy explains it entirely as the result of demonology or mesmerism. She implies that it was a conspiracy hatched by Richard Kennedy and Mr. Spofford to injure the sale of the second edition of her book, which had been out but a few weeks when her husband was placed under arrest:

The purpose of the plotters was evidently to injure the reputation of metaphysical practice, and to embarrass us for money at a time when they hoped to cripple us in the circulation of our book. This is seen in the fact that our name was in any way introduced in the case when we were not implicated by the law and by the gospel.^[8]

Mrs. Eddy attributed Mr. Kennedy's participation in the plot to the fact that her suit against him for the amount of the promissory note signed in Amesbury in 1870 was still pending. She says:

The mental malpractitioners managed that entire plot; and if the leading demonologist can exercise the power over mind, and govern the conclusions and acts of people as he has boasted to us that he could do, he had ample motives for the exercise of his demonology from the fact that a civil suit was pending against him for the collection of a note of one thousand dollars, which suit Mr. Arens was jointly interested in.^[9]

In her exposition of the case Mrs. Eddy published affidavits from Caroline Fifield and Margaret Dunshee, in which they testified that Mr. Eddy was instructing a class in Metaphysics in Boston Highlands at the hour when Sargent and Collier declared they had seen him in a freight-yard in East Cambridge. She also published the following confession which, she said, Mr. Eddy had received from Collier a few weeks after the hearing before the Grand Jury:

Taunton, Dec. 16, 1878. 

To Drs. Asia G. Eddy and E. J. Arnes—feeling that you have been greatly ingered by faulse charges and knowing their is no truth in my statement that you attempted to hire James L. Sargent to kil Dr. Spoford and wishing to retract as far as poserble all things I have sed to your ingury, I now say that thair is no truth whatever in the statement that I saw you meet James L. Sargent at East Cambridge or any outher place and pay or offer to pay him any money that I never hurd a conversation betwene you and Sargent as testifyed to by me whouther Spoford has anything to do with Sargent I do not know all I know is that the story I told on the stand is holy faulse and was goton up by Sargent.

Geo. A. Collier. 

This letter was subsequently reinforced by an affidavit said to have been made by Collier before a justice in Taunton, on December 17, 1878, in which he makes a similar declaration.

The evidence on both sides is of the most anomalous and inconsequential character and reads like the testimony heard in the nightmare of some plethoric judge. The witnesses for the prosecution were, with the exception of Jessie Macdonald and the two detectives, utterly worthless as sources of testimony.

Mrs. Eddy's charge that the plot was the malicious invention of Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Spofford can be regarded only as the delusion of an unreasonable and over-wrought woman. The only other possible solution would advance Sargent as the instigator of the plot. If a double blackmailing enterprise could be attributed to Sargent, the tangle could be easily explained. But this hypothesis is weakened by the fact that he never asked for or received any money from Mr. Spofford. And why a saloon-keeper from Sudbury Street should have gone so far from his familiar haunts and associates, and should have aspired to play a part in the quarrels of the Christian Scientists, remains a difficult question.

1. A full account of this action was given in Chapter X.
2. This suit has already been referred to in Chapter IX. From Judge Choate's finding it would seem that his decision was based largely on the fact that when Mrs. Eddy taught Tuttle and Stanley in 1870 she still instructed her students to "manipulate" the heads of their patients, whereas she later repudiated this method and declared before Judge Choate that it was of no efficacy in healing the sick, thus discrediting the instruction she had given the defendants.
3. This refers to Mrs. Eddy's continued ill health.
4. She thus explained her position in the local press:

   "BOTH SIDES

   "Mr. Editor:—We desire to say through the columns of your interesting weekly, that certain threatening letters received by ourself, and an esteemed citizen of one of your adjacent towns, had better be discontinued.

   "These letters are from a Mr. Noyes [Spofford's attorney] of Newburyport, under orders of D. H. Spofford, who is already prosecuted by us to answer at a higher tribunal than the prejudice, falsehood or malice, before which some people would arraign others.

   "We have befriended this former student of ours when friendless, we have effected cures for him professionally, not only in the cases of Mrs. Atkinson, Miss Tandy, and Miss Ladd, but others, and we did this without any reward, but to gain some place for him in the public confidence.

   "As the founder of a Metaphysical practice, we have a warm interest In the success of all our students, and have always promoted it, unless compelled in some especial instances, by a strong sense of our duty to the public, to speak of a MALPRACTICE.

   "Author of Science and Health." 

5. Sargent stated in court that, when he first met Mr. Arens, he was a bartender in a saloon on Portland Street. He had been running a place of his own for about six weeks when the hearing occurred.
6. The first read: "That Edward J. Arens and Asa G. Eddy of Boston aforesaid, on the 28th day of July in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and seventy-eight, Boston aforesaid, with Force and Arms, being persons of evil minds and dispositions did then and there unlawfully conspire, combine, and agree together feloniously, wilfully, and of their malice aforethought, to procure, hire, incite, and solicit, one James L. Sargent, for a certain sum of money, to wit, the sum of five hundred dollars, to be paid to said Sargent by them, said Arens and Eddy, feloniously, wilfully, and of his, said Sargent's malice aforethought, in some way and manner and by some means, instruments, and weapons, to said jurors unknown, one, Daniel H. Spofford, to kill and murder. Against the law, peace, and dignity of said Commonwealth."

   The second count charged the prisoners with hiring Sargent "with force and arms in and upon one, Daniel H. Spofford, to beat, bruise, wound, and evil treat, against the law, peace, and dignity of said Commonwealth."

7. Science and Health (1881), chapter vi, pp. 20-33.
8. Science and Health (1881), chapter vi, p. 22.
9. Science and Health (1881) chapter vi, p. 29.