Heart’s Haven (1918) is Mrs. Burnham’s account of May Ca’line, a village beauty who, as between two lovers, kept faith with the one to whom she had betrothed herself. Her son marries a girl of no breeding and is saved from disaster by his mother’s rejected lover, whose story he does not know. May Ca’line herself is later the means of restoring her son’s fortunes. There is a double love story very pleasantly told and very happily worked out.
Though with The Leaven of Love Mrs. Burnham has given over writing Christian Science novels the underlying ideas of her work, which were there before she wrote The Right Princess, which were there when she wrote Dr. Latimer, remain unaltered and always expressed. These ideas are those of peaceful and happy existences, of the validity of mental experiences, of the influence of intellectual environment. Thus as lately as 1916, in Instead of the Thorn, she gives us the story of a Chicago girl brought up in luxury, whose father is ruined in circumstances that seem to her to involve his business associate. The fact that this young man is in love with the girl sets up the complication, or struggle, necessary to make a novel. The girl is finally persuaded to go to New England for rest, and Mrs. Burnham directs the reader’s attention less to the solution of certain external problems than to the way in which simple, quiet village life restores the heroine’s mental poise and happiness. As for the proof that Mrs. Burnham’s faith was antecedent to the first of her Christian Science novels what clearer evidence need be asked than Helen Ivison’s characterization of Dr. Latimer in the story, Dr. Latimer?
“The secret of his influence over people is only that absolute trust in God which he has learned somehow in life’s school. He puts self out of the way more than any one we ever knew, and so a power shines through him which is not of this world, and people, when they come near him, feel all that is morally best in them being drawn forward, and are conscious of crowding out of sight all that they would be ashamed to have come to his notice.”
Nothing better illustrates the quality of Mrs. Burnham’s humor—a humor that makes her stories palatable reading even where the reader disagrees violently with the ideas set forth—than the chapters in Jewel where Jewel is suffering from what those about her agree to be fever and sore throat. Dr. Ballard has prepared medicine in a glass of water. Jewel is to take a couple of spoonfuls of the “water” to satisfy Mrs. Forbes. Instead she drinks heavily from an unmedicated pitcherful. By evening she is much better. Then does the doctor, who thinks he has tricked Jewel by persuading her to trick the housekeeper, learn that he has been fooled instead.
“‘Didn’t you drink any of the water?’ asked Dr. Ballard at last.
“‘Yes, out of the pitcher.’
“‘Why not out of the glass?’
“‘It didn’t look enough. I was so thirsty.’
“Mr. Evringham finally found voice.
“‘Jewel, why didn’t you obey the doctor?’ ...