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.

  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. 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.

  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.

  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.

  CHAPTER XIV

  MES. EDDY ADDRESSES BOSTON AUDIENCES — SHE IS TORTURED BY HER FEAR OF MESMERISM — ORGANISATION OF “THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, SCIENTIST” — WITHDRAWAL OF EIGHT LEADING MEMBERS — MRS. EDDY’S RETREAT FROM LYNN

  AS EARLY AS 1878, Mrs. Eddy began to give occasional lectures in a Baptist church on Shawmut Avenue, in Boston, and in 1879 she gave Sunday afternoon talks in the Parker Fraternity Building on Appleton Street. Her audiences were not large. Sometimes, on a fine afternoon as many as fifty persons would be present, while again the number would fall as low as twenty-five. Mrs. Eddy came up from Lynn on Sunday afternoon, attended by Mr. Eddy, and often by several of her students. She usually wore a black silk gown and a hat when she spoke, used gold-bowed spectacles, and was confident and at ease upon the rostrum. Mr. Eddy, dressed in a black frock-coat, acted as usher and passed the collection-plate. Mrs. Eddy spoke on the curative aspect of her Science almost entirely, relating many individual instances of the astonishing cures she and her students had performed. The religious element in her discussions was incidental and rather cold. She never hinted at repentance, humility, or prayer in the ordinary sense, as essential to regeneration. Moral reform came naturally as a result of adopting Christian Science. Mrs. Eddy possessed on the platform that power of moving people to a state of emotional exaltation which had already proved so effective in her classroom.

  After the lecture Mrs. Eddy always came down from the platform and shook hands cordially with her audience. The company usually separated into two groups, one surrounding Mr. Eddy and the other gathering about his wife. Mr. Eddy, in a low voice, would recommend the interested inquirer to join one of Mrs. Eddy’s classes and thus come into a fuller understanding of the subject. Occasionally a visitor would ask Mrs. Eddy why she used glasses instead of overcoming the defect in her eyesight by mind. This question usually annoyed her, and on one occasion she replied sharply that she “wore glasses because of the sins of the world,” probably meaning that the belief in failing eyesight had become so firmly established throughout the ages that she could not at once overcome it.

  Mrs. Eddy’s audiences were largely made up of people who were interested in some radical theory of theology or medicine. Mr. Arthur T. Buswell, for instance, who afterward became prominent in the Christian Science movement, had been employed in the New England Hygiene Home, a water-cure sanatorium at West Concord, Vt., and had come to Boston to practise hydropathy. His friend, James Ackland, who attended the lectures with him, was a professor of phrenology.

  When Mrs. Eddy felt that one of the Sunday afternoon visitors had become interested in her lectures, Mr. Eddy mildly but persistently followed him up. He used often to drop in at Mr. Buswell’s office and lay before him the material and spiritual advantages of a course with Mrs. Eddy, telling him that it was impossible to realise the wonder of Mrs. Eddy’s teaching from her public lectures. He always entered the office quietly, glancing back over his shoulder to see whether he were being followed, and spoke in a very low tone, looking nervously about him as he talked. He explained that the mesmerists were constantly on his trail, and that to avoid them extreme caution was necessary on his part. If he walked with Mr. Buswell on the street, he slipped along as if trying to avoid observation, and would sometimes suddenly catch Buswell’s sleeve and pull him into a doorway, as if he felt mesmerism in the air, telling him it was very important that they should not be seen together, as the mesmerists were always shadowing him, ready to set to work upon the minds of prospective students and prejudice them against Mrs. Eddy.

  Mr. Buswell and his friend Ackland, the phrenologist, were finally persuaded to go to Lynn and study under Mrs. Eddy. They both roomed in Mrs. Eddy’s house, and Mr. Buswell’s experience there was a pleasant one. Mrs. Eddy’s fortunes were then at a low ebb. There was now a good deal of feeling against her in the town, and her frequent differences with her followers and the scandal caused by the witchcraft and conspiracy cases had reduced the number of her students. There were but three in Mr. Buswell’s class, and one of these dropped out, leaving only Mr. Ackland and himself to complete the course. Other students who came under Mrs. Eddy’s instruction at about this time were: Hanover P. Smith, a young man who worked in his aunt’s boarding-house in Boston and who afterward became incurably insane; Joseph Morton, who was a maker of flavoring extracts in Boston, and who was interested in astrology; and Edward A. Orne.

  Litigation had been a heavy drain upon Mrs. Eddy financially. She and Mr. Eddy let the lower floor of their house, occupying, themselves, only the upstairs rooms, and now they rented one of those. They did their own housework, and Mrs. Eddy was exceedingly cheerful and courageous about it. Mr. Buswell remembers finding her on her knees with soap and pail one afternoon, scrubbing her back stairs. When he reproved her for undertaking such heavy work, she laughed and replied that it was good for her to stir about after writing all morning, adding that she could not get good help, as the mesmerists immediately affected her servants. Mr. Buswell remembers that in her classroom she sometimes related how once when she was driving through Boston in an open carriage, a cripple had come up to the carriage, and she had put out her hand and healed him. She also told of returning home after several days’ absence to find her window plants drooping and dying. She had discovered that when she was in the house the plants could live without sunlight or moisture, so, instead of watering them, she put them in the attic and treated them mentally, after which they were completely restored. Sometimes, on the same morning that she related one of these extravagant anecdotes, she would tell, with apparent appreciation, how Bronson Alcott, after reading Science and Health, had said that no one but a woman or a fool could have written it.

  At this time the skeleton in the house was still Malicious Mesmerism. Ever since his arrest upon the charge of conspiracy to murder, Mr. Eddy had seemed stupefied by fear, and he went about like a man labouring under a spell. He was trying to teach a little, but said that the mesmerists broke up his classes. He had a tendency to brood upon the few things in which he was interested at all, and he used to become deeply despondent, confiding to the loyal students his fear that the work would be utterly broken down and trampled out.

  Mrs. Eddy was nervous about her mail, and believed that her letters were intercepted. When she wrote letters now, she had one of her students take them to some remote part of the town and drop them into one of the mail-boxes farthest away from her house. She believed that the mesmerists kept her under continual espionage, and she seldom went out of the house alone. When Mr. Eddy got home after a trip to Boston, ten miles distant, she would embrace him and thank God that he had escaped the enemy once again. Mrs. Eddy’s heaviest cross was that the mesmerists were apparently triumphant. She was greatly chagrined by the fact that Richard Kennedy had been able to build up a practice in Boston, and his prosperity hurt her like a personal affront. He had stolen his success, she said. Within a year after the conspiracy trouble, Edward Arens also incurred her displeasure, and she added him to the list of mesmerists. She kept photographs of Kennedy, Spofford, and Arens in her desk, Kennedy’s picture marked with a black cross, and the other two marked with red crosses. Kennedy was still regarded as the Lucifer of mesmerism and the source of the corrupting influence. In the course of time he had fellows, but never a rival. It was when Mrs. Eddy would become agitated in talking of these three men that her students first noticed that violent trembling of the head, which was the beginning of the palsy which afterward afflicted Mrs. Eddy. Mesmerism became the dominating conception of her life, and it is difficult to find a parallel for such a constant and terrifying sense of evil unless one turns to Bunyan in the days before his conversion, or to Martin Luther in the monastery of Wittenberg, when he lived under such a continual oppression of sin that the gates of hell seemed always open just under the flagstones as he paced the cloisters. Her illnesses, like Luther’s earache, were purely the result of a consciously malicious agency; but, unlike Luther’s, Mrs. Eddy’s depression never came from a feeling of unworthiness or a sense of sin.