Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/185

Rh Most of Mrs. Glover's early students were artisans; many of them shoe-workers. Lynn was then a city of about thirty thousand inhabitants, and shoemaking was, as it now is, the large and characteristic industry. Many of the farmers about the country had little shoeshops in their backyards, and during the winter season took out piecework from the factories. The majority of the village and country boys had had something to do with shoemaking before they went into business or chose a profession, and when Whittier went from the farm to attend the academy at Haverhill, he was able to pay his way by making slippers. Among Mrs. Glover's first students were S. P. Bancroft, a shoe-worker; George W. Barry, foreman in a shoeshop; Dorcas Rawson, a shoe-worker, and her sister Mrs. Miranda R. Rice; Charles S. Stanley, a shoe-worker; Miss Frances Spinney, who had a shop in which she employed a score of girls to sew on women's shoes; Mrs. Otis Vickary; George H. Allen, who was employed in his father's box factory, and Wallace W. Wright, then accountant in a bank.

Liberal religious ideas flourished in New England thirty-five years ago, and although one woman left the class because "Mrs. Glover was taking Christ away from her," most of the students were ready to accept the idea of an impersonal God and to deny the existence of matter. Even Dorcas Rawson, who was an ardent Methodist and had "professed holiness," unhesitatingly accepted the statement that God was Principle.

From the very beginning of her teaching Mrs. Glover had with her students those differences which later made her career so stormy. After the defection of Stanley and Tuttle, Mrs. Vickary, dissatisfied with her instruction, sued for and