● ● ● meeting? it is a precious time to me for there I feel like meeting with you and sometimes I fear I worship mary instead of the great jehovah.5
Mrs. Glover’s feelings had been expressed in a poem entitled “To my Mother, after a long separation,” written during these months and published later in The Floral Wreath, and the lines she wrote when expecting to leave for Haiti were also full of her love for the scenes of her youth.6 These were normal enough expressions of sentiment from a young bride thoroughly delighted by her new life but looking back a little nostalgically to the one she had left. It is reasonable to assume that if it had not been for Glover’s early death she would have grown into her new life with increasing absorption.
For three weeks after that unhappy event, she remained in Wilmington, settling Glover’s affairs and gaining strength for the ordeal of the journey to New England. The Wilmington Masons arranged for one of their number to accompany her North; in fact, their kindness to the young widow was something she would remember with gratitude for the rest of her days.7 When she finally left on July 19, they all came to see her off, including Dr. Repiton, the chaplain of the lodge.8
5 Abigail Ambrose Baker to Mary Baker Glover, 5 May 1844, 1919.001.0007, LMC. In her earlier letter Mrs. Baker also referred to the “twilight meeting”: “the hour appointed by you and me is precious.” Abigail Ambrose Baker to Mary Baker Glover, 6 February 1844, 1919.001.0027, LMC. In Mrs. Glover’s poem, “The Emigrant’s Farewell,” which is a revision of her earlier poem written “when expecting to leave for the West Indies” and which was published in The Covenant in May, 1846, occur the lines:
Mother at eventide, alone
Commune with me afar.
Mary M. Glover, “The Emigrant’s Farewell,” The Covenant, A Monthly Magazine, Devoted to the Cause of Odd-Fellowship, May 1846, pp. 215–216.
6 [“To My Mother After a Long Separation,” poem, c. 1844, A10001, MBEL; Mrs. G. W. Glover, “My Mother,” The Floral Wreath, and Ladies’ Monthly Magazine, June 1844, pp. 18–19. Publisher’s note: This source has been located since the publication of the first edition, which contains the following note.] The exact date of publication is not known. The Sondley Library in Asheville, NC, contains incomplete issues and items from this periodical, and the poem referred to is included among these, but without an indication of the date of issue. No complete file of the magazine is known to exist today.
7 [Mary Baker Eddy, Retrospection and Introspection (Boston: Christian Science Board of Directors, 1920), p. 19.] George Sullivan Baker wrote a letter of elaborate thanks, in the flowery rhetoric of the time, which was published in the Wilmington Chronicle. George S. Baker, “A Card,” Wilmington Chronicle, 21 August 1844, p. 3.
8 Biographical sketch of A. Paul Repiton by Mrs. Robert W. Lamb (Repiton’s daughter), 9 June 1920, 1920.026.001, LMC.