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The copies were kept in security after Dr. Quimby's death so that their teachings should be given to people who appreciated them, and so that they should not be published before the right time. Thus the few came to know that they existed. From the Misses Ware we had abundant opportunity to learn the method of producing and copying the writings as above described.
Mr. A. J. Swarts, one of the pioneers of the movement now known as New Thought, took pains to investigate the facts in order to clear away misapprehensions which prevailed concerning the discovery of Christian Science. Mr. Swarts had nothing against Mrs. Eddy nor any reason for defending Dr. Quimby except to bring out the truth. After visiting Belfast, where he had opportunity to read excerpts from the press concerning Quimby's work and to hear portions of the manuscripts read by George Quimby, Mr. Swarts published his findings in the Mental Science Magazine, Chicago, April, 1888.* Learning that the facts of her indebtedness to Quimby were becoming known through the endeavors of Mr. Swarts, Mrs. Eddy sent from Boston over her own signature to the Portland Daily Press, while Mr. Swarts was in Portland, a paid article called an "Important Offer." Among other things, Mrs. Eddy offered to pay the cost of printing the Quimby manuscripts, the qualification being, in Mrs. Eddy's own words, "provided that I am allowed first to examine said manuscripts, and that I find they were P. P. Quimby's own compositions, and not mine that were left with him many years ago, or that they have not since his death, in 1865, been stolen from my published works." Inasmuch as everything depended on her own decision, of course no attention was paid to this offer. Readers interested to follow this controversy in detail will be able to do so by means of the summary in the Appendix. They will then see that with the publication of this volume the matter has become one of "internal evidence," since the writings show plainly that they were produced by a mind of Dr. Quimby's type as that mind has been characterized by those who knew him intimately, hence that the manuscripts could not have been the products of the one who claimed to have written them.
* Reprinted in "The True History of Mental Science," revised edition, 1899.
