Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/55

Rh so excited over the wonderful phenomena of Mrs. Glover's writing mediumship that his mind was temporarily unbalanced. A former Tilton woman, who remembers these events, writes of Mrs. Glover's ability as a writing medium: "This was by no means looked upon as anything discreditable, but only as a matter of great astonishment."

During these years, too, Mrs. Glover tried her hand at writing. She spent many hours in her room "composing poetry," which sometimes appeared in the poet's corners of local newspapers, and there is a tradition that she wrote a love story for Godey's Lady's Book. This literary tendency was a valuable asset, which Mrs. Glover made the most of. It gave her a certain prestige in the community, and she was not loth to pose as an "authoress." Perhaps it was this early habit of looking upon herself as a literary authority which led her to take those curious liberties with English which have always been characteristic of her. She drew largely upon the credit of the language, sometimes producing a word or evolving a pronunciation which completely floored her hearers. Some of these words and phrases have passed into local bywords. "When I vociferate so loudly, why do you not respond with greater alacrity?" she sometimes seriously demanded of her attendants. She referred to plain John Varney as "Mr. Ve-owney," and few ordinary words were left unadorned. She sought also to improve upon nature in the matter of her own good looks. Although she had a beautiful complexion, she rouged and powdered, and although she had excellent teeth, she had some of them replaced by false ones, "made entirely of platinum," as Mrs. Glover described them.