Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/32

4 typical son of New Hampshire. They had swung the ax, carried the surveyor’s chain, shouldered the musket, fought off the savages, and taken part in government and the establishing of churches and schools. Mark Baker lived on his own farm, a tract of five hundred acres inherited with his brother James. His father was the largest taxpayer in the town. Mark Baker was a justice of the peace for his township, a deacon of the church, a school committeeman, and for many years chaplain of the state militia. His friends were the clergy, the lawyers of Concord and surrounding towns, a governor of his state, upon whose staff a son served. A future president of the United States was an occasional guest at his home. But his friends also were astute men of business, mill owners, builders, men destined to change the character of the state from agricultural to manufacturing.

The family life at Bow was not set in a deadly routine of depressing labor. To so conceive it is to fail to rise to the true viewpoint which shall help us to understand the character we are considering. There never was a time in history when a people were more alive and progressive than the Americans after the War of Independence. There was no neighborhood in America more admirably situated to reap the full benefit of that peculiar, intense, spiritual culture than was the town of Bow, five miles from the city of Concord. Franklin Pierce and Daniel Webster were reared under these identical conditions. Emerson and Hawthorne have declared the conditions admirable for developing genius.