How To Stop Worrying And Start Living

Opening the door, "Mother" Webster saw a frail little creature, "scarcely more than a hundred pounds of frightened skin and bones". The stranger, a Mrs. Glover, explained she was seeking a home where she could think and work out a great problem that absorbed her day and night.

"Why not stay here?" Mrs. Webster replied. "I'm all alone in this big house."

Mrs. Glover might have remained indefinitely with "Mother" Webster, if the latter's sonin-law, Bill Ellis, hadn't come up from New York for a vacation. When he discovered Mrs.

Glover's presence, he shouted: "I'll have no vagabonds in this house"; and he shoved

?How To Stop Worrying And Start Living? By Dale Carnegie 61

this homeless woman out of the door. A driving rain was falling. She stood shivering in the rain for a few minutes, and then started down the road, looking for shelter.

Here is the astonishing part of the story. That "vagabond" whom Bill Ellis put out of the house was destined to have as much influence on the thinking of the world as any other woman who ever walked this earth. She is now known to millions of devoted followers as Mary Baker Eddy-the founder of Christian Science.

Yet, until this time, she had known little in life except sickness, sorrow, and tragedy. Her first husband had died shortly after their marriage. Her second husband had deserted her and eloped with a married woman. He later died in a poor-house. She had only one child, a son; and she was forced, because of poverty, illness, and jealousy, to give him up when he was four years old. She lost all track of him and never saw him again for thirty-one years.

Because of her own ill health, Mrs. Eddy had been interested for years in what she called "the science of mind healing". But the dramatic turning point in her life occurred in Lynn, Massachusetts. Walking downtown one cold day, she slipped and fell on the icy pavement-and was knocked unconscious. Her spine was so injured that she was convulsed with spasms. Even the doctor expected her to die. If by some miracle she lived, he declared that she would never walk again.

Lying on what was supposed to be her deathbed, Mary Baker Eddy opened her Bible, and was led, she declared, by divine guidance to read these words from Saint Matthew:

"And, behold, they brought to him a man sick of the palsy, lying on a bed: and Jesus ...

said unto the sick of the palsy: Son, be of good cheer; thy sins be forgiven thee. ...

Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thine house. And he arose, and departed to his house."

These words of Jesus, she declared, produced within her such a strength, such a faith, such a surge of healing power, that she "immediately got out of bed and walked".

"That experience," Mrs. Eddy declared, "was the falling apple that led me to the discovery of how to be well myself, and how to make others so. ... I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon."

Such was the way in which Mary Baker Eddy became the founder and high priestess of a new religion: Christian Science -the only great religious faith ever established by a woman- a religion that has encircled the globe.

You are probably saying to yourself by now: "This man Carnegie is proselytising for Christian Science." No. You are wrong. I am not a Christian Scientist. But the longer I live, the more deeply I am convinced of the tremendous power of thought. As a result of thirty-five years spent in teaching adults, I know men and women can banish worry, fear, and various kind of illness, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! ! I know! ! ! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.

For example, one of these transformations happened to one of my students, Frank J.