Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/160

122 after his departing figure, in the keener social light of Lynn appeared as rather a boorish Beau Brummel, not overnice in the proprieties. In fact gross Impropriety was soon to stamp him unmistakably and thereafter claim him for her own.

Not for the satisfaction, therefore, of any aspiration of her own, but to interest her husband and give him a social environment in which he would not trip at every step, Mrs. Patterson joined him in uniting with the Linwood lodge of Good Templars. The “Worthy Chief” of that organization found that Mrs. Patterson wrote for the press occasionally and was gifted as a speaker and that when she could be prevailed upon to address the lodge, she was listened to with unfeigned interest. Her well-stored mind invested any subject she handled with vital interest and her pleasing address made her a most engaging speaker.

“Mrs. Patterson was unusual in almost every particular,” the lodge president has said, “unusually well-bred, cultivated, and fine-looking, and of excellent taste in matters of dress and the toilet. Some people would comment unfavorably through a sense of inferiority, I firmly believe, and would call her affected, for she was unusually scrupulous in the observation of social form. She had a quiet way about her of commanding attention and in the delivery of an address was, in a strangely quiet way, impressive.”

With such a member on their lists it was not long before the lodge chose her as presiding officer of the Legion of Honor, the women’s branch of the