● ● ● added, “You were in the office and showed your love for children by your kindness to me.”155
Although Patterson was by this time a social embarrassment, his wife soon after settling in Lynn had many friends. She was especially intimate with two Quaker families, the Phillipses and the Winslows, and the friendship meant a good deal to her. She and Patterson also joined the Linwood Lodge of Good Templars, a temperance society which mingled moral earnestness and social conviviality. Before long she was elected Exalted Mistress of the Legion of Honor, the women’s auxiliary of the Good Templars, and her experience as presiding officer of the organization gave her a familiarity with parliamentary procedure that was useful in her later career.
Edwin J. Thompson, who in 1865 was head of the Linwood Lodge, was a dentist like Patterson. In 1907 he wrote:
I remember Mrs. Patterson was a woman who had the welfare of humanity at heart and seemed to be imbued with an earnest desire to do good. She was active in the Lodge work . . . used to speak often at the meetings, saying sensible and helpful things . . . an attractive woman both in looks and manner . . . bright and cheerful and very witty . . . a good woman, and I never knew her to do any wrong or to wrong any one.156
An account by Mrs. Patterson in the Lynn Weekly Reporter of an excursion to Marblehead by the Good Templars calls up an atmosphere of hearty provincial jollity—“After dinner, the continued bits of ● ● ●
155 Elizabeth Moulton, "Statement of Miss Moulton," 14 January 1907, recorded in Alfred Farlow, "Facts and Incidents Relating to Mrs. Eddy," c. 1909, Subject File, Alfred Farlow - Manuscript - Facts and Incidents Relating to Mrs. Eddy (2 of 2), pp. 133-134, MBEL, Mrs. H. A. Kelly to Mary Baker Eddy, 15 September 1906, IC684a.77.042, p. 1, MBEL.
156 Edwin J. Thompson, recorded in John H. Thompson, "Report of John H. Thompson, a result of an investigation made in December, 1906" c. 1907, Subject File, John H. Thompson, p. 19, MBEL. At the time the McClure's articles were appearing, Thompson in a letter to J. H. Thompson protested what he considered to be their unfairness and added: "I did not understand her at that time any more than I do at present, but that does not matter [.] I like to see fair play especially if there is a woman in the case and if anyone does right or what their conscience tells them is right let them be treated right by their fellow human beings." Edwin J. Thompson, 28 January 1907, Subject File, John H. Thompson, MBEL.