l be a great comfort to your mother if you do it.
Send all--ALL of them. Be sure of that. If you will do this
for me I will make you and Mary some presents of value, I
assure you. Let no one but Mary and your lawyer, Mr. Wilson,
know what I herein write to Mary and you. With love.
Mother, M. B. G. Eddy.
Mr. Glover refused to give up his letters, and on March 1, 1907, he
began, by himself and others as next friends, an action in Mrs. Eddy's
behalf against some ten prominent Christian Scientists, among whom
were Calvin Frye, Alfred Farlow, and the officers of the Mother Church
in Boston. This action was brought in the Superior Court of New
Hampshire. Mr. Glover asked for an adjudication that Mrs. Eddy was
incompetent, through age and failing faculties, to manage her estate;
that a receiver of her property be appointed; and that the various
defendants named be required to account for alleged misuse of her
property. Six days later Mrs. Eddy met this action by declaring a
trusteeship for the control of her estate. The trustees named were
responsible men, gave bond for $500,000, and their trusteeship was to
last during Mrs. Eddy's lifetime. In August Mr. Glover withdrew his
suit.
This action brought by her son, which undoubtedly caused Mrs. Eddy a
great deal of annoyance, was but another result of those indirect
methods to which she has always clung so stubbornly. When her son
appealed to her for financial aid, she chose, instead of meeting him
with a candid refusal, to tell him that she was not allowed to use her
own money as she wished, that Mr. Frye made her account for every
penny, etc., etc. Mr. Glover made the mistake of taking his mother at
her word. He brought his suit upon the supposition that his mother was
the victim of designing persons who controlled her affairs--without
consulting her, against her wish, and to their own advantage--a
hypothesis which his attorneys entirely failed to establish.
This lawsuit disclosed one interesting fact, namely, that while in
1893 securities of Mrs. Eddy amounting to $100,000 were brought to
Concord, and in January, 1899, she had $236,200, and while in 1907 she
had about a million dollars' worth of taxable property, Mrs. Eddy in
1901 returned a signed statement to the assessors at Concord that the
value of her taxable property amounted to about nineteen thousand
dollars. This statement was sworn to year after year by
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