Article March 25, 1905 Issue

The Right Retort

Helen Hunt Jackson

The Bulletin

Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, the head of the Christian Science movement, is noted throughout New England for her cleanliness.

Mrs. Eddy lived in her youth in Lynn, Mass., and the other day a Lynn woman said of her,—

"Mrs. Eddy was charitable when she lived here. No one was ever turned from her door. Only, always, she insisted that her petitioners be neat and clean. A tramp, dirty and lazy, stood small chance of enlisting her sympathy till he had cleaned himself up.

"One day a very dirty tramp came to her house. She admitted him. She regarded him closely. She asked him what he wanted.

"'Lady', the tramp whined, 'I'm tryin' to get back to me poor old mother. She ain't seen me face for ten years.'

"Mrs. Eddy smiled grimly.

"'I guess that's true', she said. 'Why don't you wash it?'" —The Bulletin, Philadelphia, Pa.

Next best to natural spontaneous cheeriness, is deliberate, intended, and persistent cheeriness which we can create, can cultivate, can so foster and cherish that after a few years the world will never suspect that it was not a hereditary gift.—Helen Hunt Jackson.

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