Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/171

Rh Glover. Some of her first dissertations upon Quimbyism were so confused as to be almost unintelligible. She had, indeed, to fashion her own tools in those years when she was carpentering away at her manuscript and struggling to get her mass of notes into some coherent form. Her mind was as untrained as her pen. Logical thought was not within her compass, and even her sporadic ideas were vague and befogged. Yet, strangely enough, her task was to present an abstract theory, and to present it largely in writing.

Everything depended upon her getting a hearing. In the first place, her doctrine was her only congenial means of making a living. In the second, it was the one thing about which she knew more than the people around her, and it gave her that distinction which was necessary to her. Above all, she had a natural aptitude for the subject and absorbed it until it literally became a part of her. Mercenary motives were always strong with Mrs. Glover, but no mercenary motive seems adequately to explain her devotion to this idea. After Quimby's death in '66, his other pupils were silent; but Mrs. Glover, wandering about with no capital but her enthusiasm, was preaching still. Her fellow-students in Portland were people of wider experience than she, and had more than one interest; but only one idea had ever come very close to Mrs. Glover, and neither things present nor things to come could separate her from it. But Mrs. Glover had not the temperament of the dreamer and devotee. There was one thing in her stronger even than her monomania, and that was her masterfulness. Others of his pupils lost themselves in Quimby's philosophy, but Mrs. Glover lost Quimby in herself.