● ● ● express her rapidly unfolding ideas, her words stumbling and tumbling over each other in the constant process of vision and revision.
There was no fixity or consistency in her use of words at this time. She was searching for a basic vocabulary, but her terms like her concepts were in continuous flux. And so she tried out her writings on the Ellises and perhaps on a few others, for she had to learn how to communicate as well as to understand.
Among her closest friends were the Charles Winslows of Ocean Street, Lynn. Mrs. Winslow was a sister of the Phillipses, and a nephew of hers, Charles Allen Taber, often met Mrs. Patterson at her house. In an affidavit which he furnished in 1913 he gave an invaluable picture of the impression made by her and her writings on a sympathetic but objective observer at this time. Describing his early meetings with her but referring to her by the name which she resumed two years after parting with Patterson, he wrote:
I felt a growing interest and found that she possessed a power of attraction different from that of any person whom I had ever met before. . . . I said to Mrs Winslow that Mrs Glover suggested Lucretia Mott whom we had met and held in high esteem. Mrs Glover seemed to fill the room with her presence and the ideas which she expressed compelled our attention. . . .
Mrs. Winslow, a broad minded and well educated member of the Society of Friends, and my wife a zealous church member, had both made a careful study of the Bible, but Mrs Glover led us toward an understanding of the Bible which neither of us had ever reached. The central principle of her conversation seemed to be the power over, the control of our physical and mental faculties, through the study of, the belief in and the daily practice of the teachings of Christ as she understood them. We said that she was reading into the Bible more than we could find in the text, but we had to admit that her ideas had a good foundation on the Bible and in the writings of some of the greatest religious teachers of the world. She made a protest against the idea, then somewhat prevalent, that we should take but little thought as to our bodies and our earthly lives, and consider only the life to come.