The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories

by Mark Twain

I took up the ‘Christian Scientist’ book and read half of it, then took a dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish was reached at last, the evolutions were complete and a fine success; but I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer materials. I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the stomach-ache into the botts, but I think one could develop the blind staggers out of the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers produced in this way would be of a better quality and more lasting than any produced by the artificial processes of a horse-doctor.

For of all the strange, and frantic, and incomprehensible, and uninterpretable books which the imagination of man has created, surely this one is the prize sample. It is written with a limitless confidence and complacency, and with a dash and stir and earnestness which often compel the effects of eloquence, even when the words do not seem to have any traceable meaning. There are plenty of people who imagine they understand the book; I know this, for I have talked with them; but in all cases they were people who also imagined that there were no such things as pain, sickness, and death, and no realities in the world; nothing actually existent but Mind. It seems to me to modify the value of their testimony. When these people talk about Christian Science they do as Mrs. Fuller did; they do not use their own language, but the book’s; they pour out the book’s showy incoherences, and leave you to find out later that they were not originating, but merely quoting; they seem to know the volume by heart, and to revere it as they would a Bible—another Bible, perhaps I ought to say. Plainly the book was written under the mental desolations of the Third Degree, and I feel sure that none but the membership of that Degree can discover meanings in it. When you read it you seem to be listening to a lively and aggressive and oracular speech delivered in an unknown tongue, a speech whose spirit you get but not the particulars; or, to change the figure, you seem to be listening to a vigorous instrument which is making a noise it thinks is a tune, but which to persons not members of the band is only the martial tooting of a trombone, and merely stirs the soul through the noise but does not convey a meaning.

The book’s serenities of self-satisfaction do almost seem to smack of a heavenly origin—they have no blood-kin in the earth. It is more than human to be so placidly certain about things, and so finely superior, and so airily content with one’s performance. Without ever presenting anything which may rightfully be called by the strong name of Evidence, and sometimes without even mentioning a reason for a deduction at all, it thunders out the startling words, ‘I have Proved’ so and so! It takes the Pope and all the great guns of his church in battery assembled to authoritatively settle and establish the meaning of a sole and single unclarified passage of Scripture, and this at vast cost of time and study and reflection, but the author of this work is superior to all that: she finds the whole Bible in an unclarified condition, and at small expense of time and no expense of mental effort she clarifies it from lid to lid, reorganises and improves the meanings, then authoritatively settles and establishes them with formulae which you cannot tell from ‘Let there be light!’ and ‘Here you have it!’ It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent confidence and command.

IV

A word upon a question of authorship. Not that quite; but, rather, a question of emendation and revision. We know that the Bible-Annex was not written by Mrs. Eddy, but was handed down to her eighteen hundred years ago by the Angel of the Apocalypse; but did she translate it alone, or did she have help? There seems to be evidence that she had help. For there are four several copyrights on it—1875, 1885, 1890, 1894. It did not come down in English, for in that language it could not have acquired copyright—there were no copyright laws eighteen centuries ago, and in my opinion no English language—at least up there. This makes it substantially certain that the Annex is a translation. Then, was not the first translation complete? If it was, on what grounds were the later copyrights granted?

I surmise that the first translation was poor; and that a friend or friends of Mrs. Eddy mended its English three times, and finally got it into its present shape, where the grammar is plenty good enough, and the sentences are smooth and plausible though they do not mean anything. I think I am right in this surmise, for Mrs. Eddy cannot write English to-day, and this is argument that she never could. I am not able to guess who did the mending, but I think it was not done by any member of the Eddy Trust, nor by the editors of the ‘Christian Science Journal,’ for their English is not much better than Mrs. Eddy’s.

However, as to the main point: it is certain that Mrs. Eddy did not doctor the Annex’s English herself. Her original, spontaneous, undoctored English furnishes ample proof of this. Here are samples from recent articles from her unappeasable pen; double columned with them are a couple of passages from the Annex. It will be seen that they throw light. The italics are mine:

1. ‘What plague spot, ‘Therefore the efficient
or bacilli were (sic) gnawing remedy is to destroy the
(sic) at the heart of this patient’s unfortunate belief,
metropolis... and bringing by both silently and audibly
it on bended knee? arguing the opposite facts in
Why, it was an institute that regard to harmonious being
had entered its vitals (sic) representing man as
that, among other things, healthful instead of diseased,
taught games,’ et cetera. (P. and showing that it is
670, ‘C.S.Journal,’ article impossible for matter to suffer,
entitled ‘A Narrative—by to feel pain or heat, to be
Mary Baker G. Eddy.’) thirsty or sick.’ (P. 375, Annex.)
2. ‘Parks sprang up (sic)...
electric street cars run ‘Man is never sick; for
(sic) merrily through several Mind is not sick, and matter
streets, concrete sidewalks cannot be. A false belief
and macadamised roads dotted is both the tempter and the
(sic) the place,’ et cetera. tempted, the sin and the
(Ibid.) sinner, the disease and its
3. ‘Shorn (sic) of its cause. It is well to be calm
suburbs it had indeed little in sickness; to be hopeful is
left to admire, save to (sic) still better; but to
such as fancy a skeleton understand that sickness is not
above ground breathing (sic) real, and that Truth can
slowly through a barren (sic) destroy it, is best of all, for
breast.’ (Ibid.) it is the universal and perfect
remedy.’ (Chapter xii.,
Annex.)

You notice the contrast between the smooth, plausible, elegant, addled English of the doctored Annex and the lumbering, ragged, ignorant output of the translator’s natural, spontaneous, and unmedicated penwork. The English of the Annex has been slicked up by a very industrious and painstaking hand—but it was not Mrs. Eddy’s.

If Mrs. Eddy really wrote or translated the Annex, her original draft was exactly in harmony with the English of her plague-spot or bacilli which were gnawing at the insides of the metropolis and bringing its heart on bended knee, thus exposing to the eye the rest of the skeleton breathing slowly through a barren breast. And it bore little or no resemblance to the book as we have it now—now that the salaried polisher has holystoned all of the genuine Eddyties out of it.