“That is Boston. I recognize it, madam. These are sublime things, and
impressive; I never understood these passages before; please go on with
the–with the–proofs.”
“Very well. Listen:
“‘And I saw another mighty angel come down from heaven, clothed with a
cloud; and a rainbow was upon his head, and his face was as it were the
sun, and his feet as pillars of fire. And he held in his hand a little
book.’
“A little book, merely a little book–could words be modester? Yet how
stupendous its importance! Do you know what book that was?”
“Was it–”
“I hold it in my hand–Christian Science!”
“Love, Livers, Lights, Bones, Truth, Kidneys, one of a series, alone and
without equal– it is beyond imagination for wonder!”
“Hear our Founder’s eloquent words: ‘Then will a voice from harmony cry,
“Go and take the little book: take it and eat it up, and it shall make
thy belly bitter; but it shall be in thy mouth sweet as honey.” Mortal,
obey the heavenly evangel. Take up Divine Science. Read it from
beginning to end. Study it, ponder it. It will be, indeed, sweet at its
first taste, when it heals you; but murmur not over Truth, if you find
its digestion bitter.’ You now know the history of our dear and holy
Science, sir, and that its origin is not of this earth, but only its
discovery. I will leave the book with you and will go, now; but give
yourself no uneasiness– I will give you absent treatment from now till I
go to bed.”
CHAPTER III
Under the powerful influence of the near treatment and the absent
treatment together, my bones were gradually retreating inward and
disappearing from view. The good work took a brisk start, now, and went
on swiftly. My body was diligently straining and stretching, this way
and that, to accommodate the processes of restoration, and every minute
or two I heard a dull click inside and knew that the two ends of a
fracture had been successfully joined. This muffled clicking and
gritting and grinding and rasping continued during the next three hours,
and then stopped–the connections had all been made. All except
dislocations; there were only seven of these: hips, shoulders, knees,
neck; so that was soon over; one after another they slipped into their
sockets with a sound like pulling a distant cork, and I jumped up as good
as new, as to framework, and sent for the horse-doctor.
I was obliged to do this because I had a stomach-ache and a cold in the
head, and I was not willing to trust these things any longer in the hands
of a woman whom I did not know, and whose ability to successfully treat
mere disease I had lost all confidence. My position was justified by the
fact that the cold and the ache had been in her charge from the first,
along with the fractures, but had experienced not a shade of relief; and,
indeed, the ache was even growing worse and worse, and more and more
bitter, now, probably on account of the protracted abstention from food
and drink.
The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic–in
fact, quite horsy–and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so, out of delicacy, I did not press it. He
looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favorable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the
head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would
know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful
of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and axle-
grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in twenty-four
hours, or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on
the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then took his