On one day of the next week after the conversation in his home with the Davis’, Jake and Kate went to the railway station in Bethany to see their Aunt Mellisa off.  She had been visiting with her brother, Peter Newby, for a few days and was on her way home to Boston.

While sitting in the station chatting and waiting for the train to come, Kate Newby saw a wall-pocket in the waiting-room on which was a neat sign, “Take One,” filled with printed literature.  She stepped to the receptacle and took out two or three pieces of literature which she placed in her handbag, and she thought no more about it till she got home and opened her bag to get her handkerchief.

Something about the leaflet attracted her attention, and she sat down and read it.  The pamphlet proclaimed the virtues of Christian Science to heal all kinds of mental and physical sicknesses and troubles.  There is no sickness, sin or death, said the treatise.  All of these things are errors of mortal mind.  We are, it continued, to ignore and repudiate these errors, for God is good and everything is good; God is eternal Mind, all-embracing, and there can be no death, and sin, and sickness in God.  Material things, it said, are not important, the spiritual is the important.  The basis of all things is the spiritual, hence we can count material things as immaterial and be all engrossed in God.  The false notion that there is sickness, it said, has led many to the grave, the false notion that there is a devil has led to the idea of sin.  But sin and sickness are errors of the mortal mind, and when we get swallowed up in the one great mind (God), there will be no more sickness, pain, sin, or death.  Much more it said which space will not permit us to narrate here.

Kate Newby read on and on.  She was longing for something better than she had.  The arguments of the pamphlet seemed plausible to her, and she embraced them.  Seeing that the Christian Science text-book was advised, she ordered a copy of Mrs. Eddy’s Science and Health.  When it arrived she read it assiduously.  She was getting very deep into the meshes of it.  Her theology was undergoing a radical change.  God, to her, was no longer personal, but the great Mind which is all-comprehensive.  She tried to believe herself well, free, and happy, and she began to enjoy a measure of relief.  But, at the same time, Kate Newby was growing more worldly; she began to lose her former distinctions of right and wrong, and the change was beginning to be made manifest in many different ways.  She began to ignore Jake and to show an aversion to material things and she began to develop a sort of overmystical attitude toward life in general.

Finally, Jake asked her point-blank, “Kate, what is the matter with you?  You are acting so queer.”

“Well, Jake, I might as well tell you,” answered Kate.  “I am a Christian Scientist.”

If Jake Newby had been hit with a cannon ball he would not have been worse shocked.