● ● ●  adventuring in the Wild West. As Clark said much later, she seemed always to be “hungry for hearts.”⁶³

He himself was much more attracted to the spiritualism that was the chief interest of his mother and many of the boarders. Clark was convinced that Mrs. Patterson was a real sensitive and could be a great medium if she would only take up spiritualism, but he stated that she viewed the suggestion with abhorrence. Out of politeness she would sometimes yield to the importunities of the others and sit through a seance, but afterwards she would argue—agreeably enough—against the validity of their beliefs, “claiming that her Science, was far superior to spirit teaching, and manifestations, in any form.”⁶⁴

By this time spiritism was sweeping the country. The people who turned to it at least showed mental curiosity and a willingness to consider the unorthodox, and it is not surprising that Mrs. Patterson found some of her first willing listeners among them. She sat at the head of the table in the Clark ménage, and the ideas she voiced sometimes caused sharp arguments among the shoe workers who made up most of the boarders. But they listened to her with the lively interest of Yankee workmen of their time and place.⁶⁵

One young man who was deeply drawn to her was Hiram S. Crafts. Like thousands of others he came to Lynn, with his wife, to work in the shoe factories for part of each year, returning for the remaining months to his home in East Stoughton (now Avon) some eighteen miles the other side of Boston, there to carry on his own cobbling. When the time came for him and his wife to leave Lynn in November, he pleaded with Mrs. Patterson to come with them and teach him how to heal.