obedience thereto."

In the latest revision of Science and Health (1902), the perfected gun
furnishes the following. The English is clean, compact, dignified,
almost perfect. But it is observable that it is not prominently better
than it is in the above paragraph, which was a product of the primitive
flint-lock:

"How unreasonable is the belief that we are wearing out life and
hastening to death, and at the same time we are communing with
immortality? If the departed are in rapport with mortality, or matter,
they are not spiritual, but must still be mortal, sinful, suffering, and
dying. Then wherefore look to them--even were communication possible
--for proofs of immortality and accept them as oracles?"--Edition of
1902, page 78.

With the above paragraphs compare these that follow. It is Mrs. Eddy
writing--after a good long twenty years of pen-practice. Compare also
with the alleged Poems already quoted. The prominent characteristic of
the Poems is affectation, artificiality; their makeup is a complacent and
pretentious outpour of false figures and fine writing, in the sophomoric
style. The same qualities and the same style will be found, unchanged,
unbettered, in these following paragraphs--after a lapse of more than
fifty years, and after--as aforesaid--long literary training. The
italics are mine:

1. "What plague spot or bacilli were [sic] gnawing [sic] at the heart of
this metropolis . . . and bringing it [the heart] on bended knee?
Why, it was an institute that had entered its vitals--that, among other
things, taught games," et cetera.--C.S. Journal, p. 670, article