The natural and lawful pride that comes with a tincture of blue and brave blood, is perhaps one of her characteristics, as is many another well born woman's. She had a long list of worthy ancestors in colonial and revolutionary days, and the McNeils, and General Knox, figure largely in her genealogy, as well as the hero who killed the ill-starred Paugus.
This big, sunny room which Mrs. Eddy calls her den—or sometimes "mother's room," when speaking of her many followers who consider her their spiritual leader—has the air of hospitality that marks its hostess herself. Mrs. Eddy has hung its walls with reproductions of some of Europe's masterpieces, a few of which had been the gifts of her loving pupils.
Looking down from the windows upon the tree-tops on the lower terrace, the reporter exclaimed: "You have lived here only four years, and yet from a barren waste of most unpromising ground has come forth all this beauty!"
"Four years!" she ejaculated; "two and a half, only two and a half years." Then, touching my sleeve and pointing, she continued: "Look at those big elms! I had them brought here in warm weather, almost as big as they are now, and not one died."
Mrs. Eddy talked earnestly of her friendships…. She told something of her domestic arrangements, of how she had long wished to get away from her busy career in Boston, and return to her native granite hills, there to build a substantial home that should do honor to that precinct of Concord.
She chose the stubbly, old farm on the road from Concord within one mile of the "Eton of America," St. Paul's school. Once bought, the will of the woman set at work, and to-day a strikingly well kept estate is the first impression given to the visitor as he approaches Pleasant View.
She employs a number of men to keep the grounds and farm in perfect order, and it was pleasing to learn that this rich woman is using her money to promote the welfare of industrious workmen in whom she takes a vital interest.
Mrs. Eddy believes that "the laborer is worthy of his hire," and, moreover, that he deserves to have a home and family of his own. Indeed, one of her motives in buying so large an estate was that she might do something for the toilers, and thus add her influence toward the advancement of better home life and citizenship.
(Boston Transcript, December 31, 1894.)