Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/58

34 was very remote and could be reached only by stage. Like all the White Mountain region, it was beautiful in the summer season, but in the winter it was rugged and desolate. The farmhouses were far apart, and the roads were sometimes impassable. Often one would not see a neighbour or a passerby for weeks at a time when the snow was deep; and the winters there were very long. In a lane off the main road, the Pattersons lived in a small frame house, which faced a deep wood. At the right rose the mountains. Back of the house there was a swift mountain brook, and there the dentist had built a small sawmill, which he operated when there was not much dentist work to do, or when his wife's ill-health made it necessary for him to stay closely at home. He also practised homœopathy intermittently, but in the main he worked at his dentistry, driving to the nearby towns to practise, and leaving his wife alone or in the care of their occasional servant. There was only one near neighbour. It is not strange that, under these circumstances, Mrs. Patterson fell into a state of chronic illness and developed ways that were considered peculiar by her friends.

Her neighbours in North Groton tell the old story of her illnesses, her hysteria, her high temper, and her unreasonable demands on her husband. She required him to keep the wooden bridge over the brook covered with sawdust to deaden the sound of footsteps or vehicles, and, according to local tradition, he spent many evenings killing discordant frogs, whose noise disturbed Mrs. Patterson. Other stories sink further toward burlesque. Old inhabitants of North Groton still remember the long drive which a neighbour made for Mrs.