Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/74

42 Mrs. Glover was entertained in the home of these cordial Southerners, made more than friends by the calamity of the hour. They did all that kinsmen could have done. They converted his business interests into as large a sum of money as possible and an escort was selected to accompany her to her home. She had already communicated with her family, and her brother George met them in New York City.

Mrs. Glover had brought with her a considerable sum of money, but her husband’s business, as may be readily understood from the nature of it, fell to pieces at his death. Now it was that she permitted his slaves to go free, unwilling to accept for herself the price of a human life. No record exists of this transaction because of the statutes on emancipation, which existed in South Carolina until the proclamation of President Lincoln. Mr. Baker, though a Democrat, and opposed to the policies of the abolitionists, was no lover of slavery and he upheld his daughter in this sacrifice of property.

Mrs. Glover was received with tenderness by her parents and given her girlhood room again, a spacious and comfortable chamber in which she had so lately donned her wedding veil. It was August, and she had escaped from the tropic heat of the South to her native mountain air. She breathed deep drafts at her window, looking out over the familiar valley. But there was in her eyes a look of loneliness, a look of fear, and they were often wide and startled, as those of one who sees a vision.

In September she gave birth to a son whom she