Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/199

Rh some minds resentment. In some homes where she had experienced agreeable friendships, she found it necessary to withdraw. In these few months of 1866 this feeling had augmented almost to persecution.

Dr. E. J. Thompson, who was at the time, and long afterward practising dentistry in Lynn, told the author that he remembered talking to Mrs. Patterson on several occasions about her ideas of religion.

“I used to say to her,” Dr. Thompson said, It may be all true, but I do not grasp it.’ As long as Mrs. Patterson, afterwards Mrs. Eddy, lived in Lynn, she was known as an unusual woman holding peculiar religious views. Never have I heard anything more against her, and I used to see her every day for many years. It was said she held peculiar views at which many people laughed. But no one spoke against her otherwise.”

Yet it was her very life that they were against, these friends of hers; for life meant nothing to her without religion. She could more easily give up society, culture, books, even church, than she could give up speaking of the understanding of God which had come to her. So she made the decision to go into what would have been for her at an earlier date a social Sahara.

To the Crafts she took her personal belongings and house furnishings and helped to make their home more like what she was used to. Her efforts resulted in an attractive home, though one of great simplicity. It would have been impossible for her to do otherwise than make her environment at least