Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/62

32 away. She asserts, however, that hope lifts the thought to “soar above matter and fasten on God,” which at this very early age presaged her future religious revelation in no uncertain outline.

The entrance of Albert Baker into Franklin Pierce’s law office at Hillsborough; his absorption into the politics of that region which he represented in the New Hampshire legislature for two successive terms; the establishment of Samuel Baker in business in Boston; and the desire of George Baker to enter the cloth mills of Sanbornton Bridge are various reasons which caused Mark Baker to remove from Bow to the mill town eighteen miles north of Concord. He relinquished his share of the title in the Bow property to his brothers’ children and bought a farm about a mile from Tilton.

The Baker home life now became more social and less patriarchal. Mary was fifteen, her sisters, Martha and Abigail, eighteen and twenty. All three sisters were notable for their beauty and good breeding. The mother’s agreeable temperament, together with her hospitable nature no less than Mr. Baker’s great interest in public affairs, drew many guests to this house in which the family lived for seven years. Mr. Baker became prominent in the church with which he and his wife very soon united. He conducted the “third meeting” and George Baker led the village choir. George was now established in Alexander Tilton’s mill and rose rapidly to become a mill agent and later a partner of the owner, who before that time had married his sister Abigail.