Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/192

154 often leave the breakfast room with the ladies to talk over the doings of the night before and the nature of the ‘phenomena.’ My mother and Mrs. Patterson would occasionally get into a lively argument, and both expressed themselves most positively on opposite sides of the question. They never fell out about it, for they were both too well used to such divergence of view among their friends. My mother was always having to defend her views, and indeed so was Mrs. Patterson. They respected each other, I may say they had too much affection to quarrel.

“But their arguments were highly entertaining to me, and I often wondered how persons holding such opposite views could shake hands so amiably over their differences. I was a youngster and felt very important, for I was going to sea. I used to think that when I came back from seeing the world, all these religious matters would have become of no importance to me. In that I was mistaken, and I fancy now that the arguments going on there at my mother’s table and of an evening when some of the party played whist and others gathered around Mrs. Patterson were the everlasting and eternal arguments of our lives, and that a prophet was among us unawares.”

Among the boarders in this mixed and highly democratic household were Hiram S. Crafts and his wife. The former was known as an expert heel-finisher in the shoe factory. He possessed an ordinary intelligence, a common school education, and