The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories
Author: Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) Genre: LiteratureThe Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg and Other Stories
in the world is created by the imaginations of the sufferers, and then kept alive by those same imaginations? Four-fifths? Not anything short
us well people, as well as for those fussy and fretting sick ones? Would it s
patients? I think so. More than get killed off now by the
Christian Science Journal'-October number, 1898. First, a Baptist clergyman gives us this true picture of 'the ave
imself and his propensities, afraid of colds and fevers,
ves us thi
tting under his feet. He does have a victory over fear and c
willing to pay for that frame of mind, year in year out? It really outvalues any price that can be put upon
aten in terror of indigestion, that brings on the cold and the fever and the indigestion and the most of our other ailments; and
creting them with doctor-stuff. The first witness testifies that when 'this most beautiful Truth first dawned on him' he had 'nearly all the ills that flesh is heir to;' that those he did not have he thought he had-and thus made the tale about complete. What was the natural result? Why, he was a dump-pit 'for all
ivable by human invention could be more formidably effective than that, in banishing imaginary ailments and in closing the entrances against subsequent applicants of their breed. I think his method was to keep saying, 'I am well! I am sound!-sound and well! well and
religious spirit in which it was used. I should think that any formula that would divert the mind from unwholesome channels and force it into healthy ones would answer every pur
n old organic trouble' which the doctor and the surgeon h
ed by that word, which is Christian-Science slang for 'ailment.' The Christian Scientist has no ailment; to him there is no such thing, and he will not use t
e was treated by the C.S. method, and 'when he heard the voice of Truth he saw spiritually.' Saw spiritually. It is a little indefinite; they had better treat him again. Indefinite testimo
vil War. When Christian Science found h
gest
uma
ta
depos
der j
jo
joi
of the m
r
uld
of all tho
omn
pains most
to a Christian Scientist and took an hour's treatment and went home painless. Two days later he 'began to eat like a well man.' Then 'the claims vanished-some at once, others more gradually;' finally, 'they have almost entirely disappeared.' And-a thing
ion to the Science slang appears on the page. We have 'demonstrations over' chilblains and such things. It seems to be a curtailed way of saying 'demonstrations of the power of Christian-Science Truth over the fiction which masquerades under the name of Chilblains.' The children as well as the adu
enabled that child to do that calm and thoughtful and judicious thing in those circumstances. She came down on her head, and by all the rules she should have broken it; but the intervention of the formula prevented that, so the only claim resulting was a blackened eye. Monday morning it was still swollen and shut. At school 'it hurt pretty bad-that is, it seemed to.' So 'I was excused, and went down in the basement and said, "Now I am depending on mamma i
of the Two Beings in an equal bond; also of Their Two Bibles. When little Gordon was two years old, 'he was playing horse on the bed, where I had left my "little book." I noticed him stop in his play, take the book carefully in his little hands, kiss it softly, then look about for the highest place of safety his arms could reach, and put it there.' This pious a
window.' It had seemed to the mother too wonderful to be true, that first time; but now she was convinced that 'neither imagination nor accident had anything to do with it.' Later, little Gordon let the author of his being see him do it. After that he did it frequently; probably every time anybody was looking. I would rather have that child t
low the dentist to use cocaine, but sat there and let him punch and drill and split and crush the tooth, and tear and slash its ulcerations, and pull out the nerve, and dig out fragments of bone; and she wouldn't once
ent of Being, or some of the other incantations, and got well and sound without having suffered any real pain and with
that the ice is getting thin here. That horse had as many as fifty claims: how could he demonstrate over them? Could he do the All-Good, Good-Good, Good-Gracious, Liver, Bones, Truth, All down
has suffered thirty years of helpless torture and makes him whole in body and mind, what is the actual sum of that achievement? This, I think: that it has restored to life a subject who had essentially died ten deaths a year for thirty years, and each of them a long and painful one. But for its interference that man would have essentially died thirty times more, in the three years which have since elapsed.