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    bowl of apple-sauce and a plate of nuts and turnovers and a pitcher of sap beer.10

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:

I have an opportunity of sending a letter by a friend of mine, Mr. Harrison Andrews, who is going to Sandbornton with the intention of attending the academy. I take great pleasure in introducing him to your acquaintance. You will find him a sterling fellow, a little enthusiastick, but none of Sol. Wilson about him. What is that poor devil doing? I hope you treat him as he deserves, with entire neglect. Abi will recollect Andrews’ sister, a particular friend of hers. He is a very    

#footnote-1

10 Martha Smith Baker to George Sullivan Baker, 1 May 1836, 1919.001.0025, LMC. 

#footnote-2

11 S. B. G. Corser to Mary Baker Eddy, 17 July 1902, IC533.57.016, MBEL. 

#footnote-3

12 [Harriet Martineau, Society in America (New York: Saunders and Otley, 1837), vol. 2, pp. 222–223.] See also her comment: “All American ladies are more or less literary: and some are so to excellent purpose: to the saving of their minds from vacuity. Readers are plentiful: thinkers are rare” (p. 256). 

#footnote-4

13 Harriet Chamberlain Smith, 9 July 1939, Reminiscence, pp. 6–7, MBEL.

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