Added to the numberless causes of the gratitude to you that I constantly feel, is a new one in your very kind invitation to me to write to you.

I sent you a questionEditorial Note: Celia F. Osgood Peterson’s question and Mary Baker Eddy’s answer are found on page 204 of the February 1886 issue of The Christian Science Journal. The question and answer was later reprinted, with revisions, on page 64 of Eddy’s book, Miscellaneous Writings 1883-1896. which was answered to my very great pleasure and satisfaction in the February Journal, Recently my aunt, Mrs. Shaw, who is a member of your church in Boston, mentioned to you my ambition to become a healer and the difficulties in my way. Your reply that it might be possible to make some arrangement to enable me to enter your college sooner than I had hoped gave her great encouragement, and me fresh hope. But perhaps she did not understand precisely what my difficulties are, and I think I had better tell them plainly to you. I am now twenty-four and have been teaching six years in the public schools, so that if I might devote my salary to my own development, I could soon go to BostonEditorial Note: Boston, Massachusetts, but it is not so much the money needed for the journey and the lessons as it is my obligation to remain at home to take the main support of my mother, and younger sisters, until I shall have paid the debts upon our home and shall be able to see a comfortable maintenance for the family ahead of me, during the time I should be studying and beginning to practice metaphysics as a profession.

I have already begun to treat my immediate friends, and with excellent success. I know I am not wrong in doing so, for I follow implicitly the instructions in "Science and Health"Editorial Note: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy, and so far as my limited knowledge does extend, I know it cannot be mistaken. But it is my ardent desire to learn of you, personally, so that I may in time become a teacher of the ScienceEditorial Note: Christian Science, as well as a healer. I cannot tell you how strongly I feel upon the subject. I cannot bear that I should miss this wonderful privilege that has come in my generation, of knowing, practicing, and preaching the one divine truth, And I often and often think "How can I ever endure to have been in this state of "the dream at the same time with Mrs. Eddy and never have seen her nor learned of her?" O, I must assure you of my deep, firm conviction that the light would work through my efforts unerringly. It seems to me there is nothing I could not bear, nothing I could not do in this cause of the Christ. I ought perhaps to tell you that I have one belief of physical infirmity. I have been extremely nearsightedAs Written:near-sighted since childhood, and I suppose wearing glasses would be a serious hindrance to my work, but of course my assured hope is that I can be cured of my belief and my glasses.[*]Archival Note: A metamark that looks like an X appears at this point in the manuscript. Personally, Christian ScienceAs Written:C. S. has done everything for me, I have always been considered the reverse of strong, and my work has been hitherto done on willpowerAs Written:will power against heavy odds of fatigue and exhaustion. Now I know there is a mightier than willpowerAs Written:will power, and I am an incarnation of health and strength, and no longer know what it is to be tired. The change in me is not one that carries such force of conviction to the outsiderAs Written:out-sider, as the cure of a disease or deformity, but to me it is just as great and wonderful as if I had been healed of belief in consumptionEditorial Note: tuberculosis.

I have written to you very personally I know, and offered you a confidence that I should to few of my intimates, and I must beg you to forgive me for doing so, and for being so long about it. I cannot feel that the author of a book that is my daily food and a wellspringAs Written:well-spring of joy and life is a stranger to me, even in my insignificance.

It is my hope and plan at present that I can go to attend your class in two years from now.