● ● ● with Mrs. S. are far from satisfactory, as the weight of my argument crushes any she is able to bring forward on the side of Science.75
Shortly afterwards Mrs. Spofford came back to Lynn for a brief visit, and on her return to Knoxville at the beginning of October she wrote Mrs. Glover:
I wanted you to know that W. Wright was on his way to Mass.
When I reached home, I found my practice very much run down. I shall have hard work to bring it up again; but I dont regret my journey, for I gained so much, spiritually while with you.
I did not talk with Wallace Wright for I saw it would do no good. He puts a false construction on every thing I say. He said this, “I don’t question the morality or Christianity of this Science, but I do doubt its application in healing the sick.” You see that he is as full of conceit as ever. . . .
Be with us, dear Mrs Glover and help us; for I am strangely drawn to this field of labor.76
The dissatisfied Wright stormed back to Lynn a month or two later, and toward the end of the year Mrs. Glover wrote Sarah Bagley:
Wright is all wrong at present[.] He gave the strongest protestations of admiration for this Science when he was about to leave for the South and has come back and is going over his grand ranting about it with all his little capacity[.] When they told me he said he should ruin this Science here and at the South I told them to tell him to take a bucket and go for the Atlantic ocean and work to empty it.77
Wright procured a bucket and began dipping. His first step was to write a long letter which was published on January 13, 1872, in the Lynn Transcript under the title “Moral Science, alias Mesmerism.” Telling of his experience in Knoxville and of his growing doubts that ● ● ●
75 Wallace W. Wright to Mary Baker Glover, 24 August 1871, IC593b.61.038, MBEL.
76 Mary Addie Spofford to Mary Baker Glover, 2 October 1871, IC327.44.001, MBEL.
77 Mary Baker Glover to Sarah O. Bagley, 20 December 1871, L03923, MBEL.