ask. Easily. Pupils flocked from far and near. They came by the
hundred. Presently the term was cut down nearly half, but the price
remained as before. To be exact, the term-cut was to seven lessons
--price, three hundred dollars. The college "yielded a large income."
This is believable. In seven years Mrs. Eddy taught, as she avers, over
four thousand students in it. (Preface to 1902 edition of Science and
Health.) Three hundred times four thousand is--but perhaps you can cipher
it yourself. I could do it ordinarily, but I fell down yesterday and
hurt my leg. Cipher it; you will see that it is a grand sum for a woman
to earn in seven years. Yet that was not all she got out of her college
in the seven.

At the time that she was charging the primary student three hundred
dollars for twelve lessons she was not content with this tidy assessment,
but had other ways of plundering him. By advertisement she offered him
privileges whereby he could add eighteen lessons to his store for five
hundred dollars more. That is to say, he could get a total of thirty
lessons in her college for eight hundred dollars.

Four thousand times eight hundred is--but it is a difficult sum for a
cripple who has not been "demonstrated over" to cipher; let it go. She
taught "over" four thousand students in seven years. "Over" is not
definite, but it probably represents a non-paying surplus of learners
over and above the paying four thousand. Charity students, doubtless. I
think that as interesting an advertisement as has been printed since the
romantic old days of the other buccaneers is this one from the Christian
Science Journal for September, 1886:


"MASSACHUSETTS METAPHYSICAL COLLEGE