Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/80

46 years. Although in delicate health, she had employed her pen in writing and at the request of the Hon. Isaac Hill prepared political articles for the New Hampshire Patriot, published at Concord. She wrote on various subjects, but especially on slavery from her experiences in the South. Her political views were somewhat different from her father’s and their views were to diverge more and more as the Civil War drew nigh. She also taught as a substitute instructor in the New Hampshire Conference Seminary, in which her old teacher, Dyer Sanborn, was now a professor. The Rev. Richard S. Rust, principal of the seminary, was so pleased with her work that he recommended to her that she open an infants’ school.

Mrs. Glover did this as an educational experiment. Her school was an early attempt to introduce kindergarten methods. It met with much criticism, as did all such experiments, in the early days in New England. So the experiment was one of brief duration. The substitution of love for harshness as a means of discipline, interest for compulsion as a method of imparting knowledge, was held up to derision by the hard-headed element of the community. And hard-headedness had a very great advantage in New England in those days. Hard-headedness was the critic of things in general. It was inclined to consider culture in a woman mincing affectation, very readily agreeing that she gave herself airs, and to be “stuck up” in a New England village, as Margaret Deland says, was next to being a heretic. It was not very easy, with such biting winds of criticism