Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/62

36 people remember the woman at that time as one who carried herself above her fellows. With no stretch of the imagination they remember her ungovernable temper and hysterical ways, and particularly well do they remember the night ride of one of the citizens who went for her husband to calm her in one of her unreasonable moods. The Mrs. Eddy of to-day is not the Mrs. Patterson of then, for this is a sort of Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll case, and the woman is now credited with many charitable and kindly acts.

Although Mrs. Patterson now lived near her boy, George, she did not see a great deal of him. He had started to go to school, and used sometimes to stop at his mother's house on his way home, but she never cared to have him with her. Instead, and by some perverse law of her nature, she showed a deep affection for the infant son of her neighbour, naming him Mark after her father, and making plans for his education and future. In 1857 Russell Cheney and his wife went West to live, taking George Glover with them. George was now thirteen. He was excited at the prospect of the trip, and after bidding his mother good-bye, he was taken to Tilton a day before the time set for their departure, to say farewell to his Grandfather Baker and his Aunt Tilton.

In Retrospection and Introspection Mrs. Eddy gives the following account of her separation from her son:

After returning to the paternal roof, I lost all my husband's property, except what money I had brought with me; and remained with my parents until after my mother's decease.

A few months before my father's second marriage to Mrs. Elizabeth Patterson Duncan, sister of Lieutenant-Governor George W. Patterson, of New York—my little son, about four years of age, was sent away from me, and put under the care of our family nurse, who had married, and resided in the northern part of New Hampshire. I had no training for self-support, and my home I regarded as very precious. The night before my child was taken from me, I knelt by his side throughout the dark hours, hoping for a vision of relief from this trial. The following