● ● ● Moral Science was what it purported to be, he stated his conclusion that it was simply the science of mesmerism.
A week later Mrs. Glover replied in the same paper:
Mr. Wright says his principal reason for writing on the subject was to prevent others from being led into it. Here he is honest. ’Tis but a few weeks since he called on me and threatened that, if I did not refund his tuition fee and pay him two hundred dollars extra, he would prevent my ever having another class in this city.
She went on to quote from his first letter to her a sentence which read, “While I do not question the right of it, it teaches a deprivation of social enjoyment if we would attain the highest round in the ladder of Science,” and she asked:
Was not this the “side” referred to in his newspaper article, in which he said, “Had I been shown both sides nothing could have induced me to take it up”?
Christianity as he calls it at one time, and mesmerism at another, cannot be the “two sides,” for these are separated by barriers that neither a geometrical figure nor a malicious falsehood would ever unite.78
Here for the first time she faced the issue of Christianity versus mesmerism that was to loom so large through the coming years; but before the next step was taken, she received a letter from Daniel Spofford which threw a little more light on the situation. Spofford, who was identified in the printed letterhead as “Dealer in Boots and Shoes, Market Square, Knoxville, Tenn.,” wrote:
I have for a long time had a desire to write to you on matters relating to science; it seems as though I too should be in the good work; although I am in business at present such may not always be the case. Financially I suppose science would be a better success than most any thing else, but setting that aside I would prefer to feel that I was ● ● ●
78 [Mary M. B. Glover, “For the Transcript,” Lynn Transcript, 20 January 1872, p. 2.]