It was, Mr. Cutchins added in a postscript, the most pleasant spot imaginable, a place flowing not with milk and honey but with maple sugar and molasses. On the other hand, a rather serious young man of the neighborhood wrote Mrs. Eddy in his old age that he recalled the times when he would drop in on the Baker ladies “where Shakespeare perchance was the theme of conversation, or checker-playing was the order of the day.”¹¹ Intellect and sobriety flavored the country pleasures. The girls, particularly Mary, were regarded as bluestockings as well as belles, and in this they illustrated Harriet Martineau’s observation: “The Americans may be considered secure of good manners generally while intellect is so revered among them as it is, above all other claims to honour. . . . Intellect carries all before it in social intercourse. . . . It is refreshing to witness the village homage paid to the author and the statesman, as to the highest of human beings.”¹²

One little girl in another village recalled long afterwards that when Abigail and Mary would drive over to visit a relative of hers who taught philosophy the conversation would be filled with big words so far beyond her fourteen-year-old comprehension that she considered it very dull indeed.¹³ In a letter to Mary, Albert wrote: