Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/226

186 the author in explaining the situation there and elsewhere when Mrs. Eddy was working out her religious statement:

The Wentworths were well enough in their way, as were the Crafts with whom Mrs. Eddy lived at an earlier period, and the Websters of Amesbury. It was an unfortunate fact that Mrs. Eddy with her small income was obliged to live with people very often at this time in her life who were without education and cultivation. It was never her custom to keep apart from the family. She invariably mingled with them and through them kept in touch with the world. She had a great work to do; she was possessed by her purpose and like Paul the apostle, and many another great teacher and leader, she reiterated to herself, “This one thing I do.” Of course simple-minded people who take life as it comes from day to day find any one with so fixed an object in life a rebuke to the flow of their own animal spirits. Mrs. Wentworth was what old-fashioned New Englanders call “clever,” that is to say, kind-hearted. She looked well after the creature comforts of those under her roof. Lucy was a spirituelle young girl, Charles was a sensible, lively boy, but Horace was something of a scoffer, without any leanings toward religious inquiry.

Horace Wentworth, the scoffer, in later years did more than scoff at the memory of his mother's guest. He even made allegations of a grave nature against Mary Baker Eddy. He related that in leaving his father's house Mrs. Glover maliciously slashed the matting and tried to set the house afire by putting live coals on a pile of papers. He gossiped after this manner for many years, and finding