● ● ●  household of Abigail Baker, constantly watchful to see that she did not take on too much responsibility, and of Mahala Sanborn, whose maternal instinct quickly attached itself to the baby, did not make the young mother’s task any easier.

That she felt a deep hunger for children throughout her life is suggested by the way she spontaneously reached out to them whenever possible, delighted in their society, formed close attachments to them, and in return was adored by them.¹⁷ Yet in her relationship to her son George she was constantly balked by circumstance—“circumstance, that unspiritual god,” to use the phrase she copied into her notebook and quoted in her writing.¹⁸ Later she might see in this same circumstance the indirect working of providence, weaning her affections away from a limited purpose to a limitless concern; but at the time it looked only like frustration.

In her later relationship to the church she founded she sometimes used the metaphor of a mother and child. The ideal of motherhood set forth in such a passage as the following one contrasts with the role forced on her by ill health in relation to her own son:

In her last years, with a worldwide movement to care for, she would frequently recount to members of her household incidents of George’s babyhood or childhood, the sort of anecdote treasured by mothers even in the age of Freud and Spock. But the first picture to emerge  ● ● ●