An example of Mrs. Glover’s care for her students’ work, as mentioned by Bancroft, occurs in the reminiscence of Mrs. Ethel B. West, who in 1875 was a small girl in Lynn. Spofford boarded with her grandmother, with whom she also lived. One day she fell down a deep stairwell at school and was carried home “broken and internally injured.” Spofford offered to heal her, and in a short time she was so improved that she thought it would be “smart” to show herself at school. The horror and alarm expressed there caused a relapse, and she was brought home again unconscious.¹⁷¹

This time Spofford was unable to bring about any change and he went off to enlist Mrs. Glover’s aid. No sooner was Mrs. Glover informed than the girl was instantly and completely healed. Although both she and her family remained strongly prejudiced against their benefactor because of what they heard about Christian Science at that time, the incident lay imbedded in the girl’s memory, and thirty years later she became a Christian Scientist.

Numerous disquieting rumors about Mrs. Glover flew around Lynn in those days, and many a good citizen felt bitter hostility to what he supposed her to be. Others stared with blank curiosity at the sign that appeared outside 8 Broad Street, “Mary B. Glover’s Christian Scientists’ Home,” with an open Bible pictured on one side, a cross and a crown on the other. Many shared the sentiment of Putney Bancroft’s uncle, a deacon of the Congregational Church: “My boy, you will be ruined for life; it is the work of the devil.”¹⁷²

Yet the days moved steadily toward the event that was to be the justification for all Mrs. Glover’s struggles. In later years she would speak several times of the nine years of hard labor that brought her to  ● ● ●