● ● ●  confiding. On one occasion she would answer out of sad experience her correspondent’s question whether she had no faith in any individual, “I have very little reason to have faith in any thing but wisdom, and my faith in [people] is just according to their wisdom, to the science they understand, & not according to what they think, or believe of themselves.”¹⁵⁹ But on another occasion she would write, throwing all caution to the winds: “I have just read Richard’s letter in which he named your tenderness and your dear Mother’s towards me in this unlooked-for-hour. . . . Was ever there a more glorious nature, a more noble soul than Richard Kennedy possesses?”¹⁶⁰

During all this time she was giving Kennedy instruction, by letter and manuscript as well as through his occasional visits. For a while he instructed Miss Bagley—“Dickey,” Mrs. Glover wrote her, “speaks in his high minded tone, willing to teach you”—but the arrangement did not turn out to be satisfactory.¹⁶¹ He was a good pupil but not a good teacher, and Miss Bagley definitely wanted Mrs. Glover’s instruction.

Kennedy’s letters show an eager and apparently earnest young man: “In my future experience with the world, Mary[,] I do not expect to obtain applause and popularity. This could not be, for truth will have its opposite, and in this will be contention and strife.”¹⁶² But a more realistic hint of his future role lies concealed in another passage: “I have not seen Sarah of late as she is not situated so as to commence yet I do not care to be in her influence untill I am ready to rub her head.”¹⁶³ He was already discovering his facility in manipulating people’s thoughts when he manipulated their heads; soon enough he would find this more to his taste than rhetorical renunciations of popularity.

He had understandably decided that he did not want to stay in Amesbury but would like to venture out into a larger world to practice his newly acquired healing skill. This fitted in well with Mrs. Glover’s conviction that the time was approaching for her to present her Science  ● ● ●