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If Mrs. Eddy really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft was exactly in harmony with the English of her plague-spot or bacilli which were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no resemblance to the book as we have it now–now that the salaried polisher has holystoned all of the genuine Eddyties out of it.

Will the plague-spot article go into a volume just as it stands? I think not. I think the polisher will take off his coat and vest and cravat and ‘demonstrate over’ it a couple of weeks and sweat it into a shape something like the following–and then Mrs. Eddy will publish it and leave people to believe that she did the polishing herself:

1. What injurious influence was it that was affecting the city’s morals? It was a social club which propagated an interest in idle amusements, disseminated a knowledge of games, et cetera.

2. By the magic of the new and nobler influences the sterile spaces were transformed into wooded parks, the merry electric car replaced the melancholy ‘bus, smooth concrete the tempestuous plank sidewalk, the macadamised road the primitive corduroy, et cetera.

3. Its pleasant suburbs gone, there was little left to admire save the wrecked graveyard with its uncanny exposures.

The Annex contains one sole and solitary humorous remark. There is a most elaborate and voluminous Index, and it is preceded by this note:

‘This Index will enable the student to find any thought or idea contained in the book.’

V

No one doubts–certainly not I–that the mind exercises a powerful influence over the body. From the beginning of time, the sorcerer, the interpreter of dreams, the fortune-teller, the charlatan, the quack, the wild medicine-man, the educated physician, the mesmerist, and the hypnotist have made use of the client’s imagination to help them in their work. They have all recognised the potency and availability of that force. Physicians cure many patients with a bread pill; they know that where the disease is only a fancy, the patient’s confidence in the doctor will make the bread pill effective.

Faith in the doctor. Perhaps that is the entire thing. It seems to look like it. In old times the King cured the king’s evil by the touch of the royal hand. He frequently made extraordinary cures. Could his footman have done it? No–not in his own clothes. Disguised as the King, could he have done it? I think we may not doubt it. I think we may feel sure that it was not the King’s touch that made the cure in any instance, but the patient’s faith in the efficacy of a King’s touch. Genuine and remarkable cures have been achieved through contact with the relics of a saint. Is it not likely that any other bones would have done as well if the substitution had been concealed from the patient? When I was a boy, a farmer’s wife who lived five miles from our village, had great fame as a faith-doctor–that was what she called herself. Sufferers came to her from all around, and she laid her hand upon them and said, ‘Have faith– it is all that is necessary,’ and they went away well of their ailments. She was not a religious woman, and pretended to no occult powers. She said that the patient’s faith in her did the work. Several times I saw her make immediate cures of severe toothaches. My mother was the patient. In Austria there is a peasant who drives a great trade in this sort of industry and has both the high and the low for patients. He gets into prison every now and then for practising without a diploma, but his business is as brisk as ever when he gets out, for his work is unquestionably successful and keeps his reputation high. In Bavaria there is a man who performed so many great cures that he had to retire from his profession of stage-carpentering in order to meet the demand of his constantly increasing body of customers. He goes on from year to year doing his miracles, and has become very rich. He pretends to no religious helps, no supernatural aids, but thinks there is something in his make-up which inspires the confidence of his patients, and that it is this confidence which does the work and not some mysterious power issuing from himself.