How many times I have thought of writing a line to try whether you still remember your old friends, Mrs. Ellis and her son, with any such interest as has ever gathered about my recollection of you and of our acquaintance, to me so delightful, in those far away days at Swampscott. . . .
I have kept the even tenor of my way, teaching school with a persistence that would be monotony but for the stimulus and cheer that come through association with children. I have my own four and my thousand and more in school, to keep me feeling young. . . .
And you, you, what can I say! Words fail when I think of the marvellous work thou hast wrought!
It may be presumption in me to address you. I do so, not in the light of the magnificence of your achievement, but out of my cherished remembrance of those precious evenings in the little sitting-room at Swampscott, when the words of Jesus, of Truth, were so illumined by your inspired interpretation.
All that may have passed from your memory, but not from mine.
Accept my heartfelt wishes for your further success and for your peace of mind under the irritating assaults of malicious enemies.42
In her reply Mrs. Eddy spoke of the death of “your dear mother . . . a noble woman, wise, tender, true,” and added, in words which were not complacent simply because they came out of the depths of total conviction, “Yes in your sweet little sitting room in Swampscott words were said that will go down the centuries and echo through all time.” Then she added the human touch that so often endeared her to friends and followers: “Do you forget your Christmas present to me—that basket of kindlings all split by your hand and left at my door? I do not.”43
She would spend all day at the Ellises writing in her room. At the end of the day, Fred Ellis reported, “she would read the pages to ● ● ●
42 Fred O. Ellis to Mary Baker Eddy, 16 November 1901, IC471.54.001, MBEL. About 1955 after giving an address to an interfaith group in Braintree, Massachusetts, I was approached by a charming old lady who informed me that she was Fred Ellis’s daughter and had often heard her father speak with affection of Mrs. Eddy.
43 Mary Baker Eddy to Fred O. Ellis, 21 January 1903, L05670, MBEL.