He used to marshal all his forces of invective against the wrong, and his attacks were nothing short of storm and siege.60
Badly underpaid as he was, and with a good classical training, Mr. Corser was forced to teach school as well as preach. He prepared his son Bartlett for the university, but of all his pupils and parishioners Mary Baker appears to have been his favorite. Bartlett wrote many years later, when he himself was leading the life of a retired country gentleman:
As Mrs. Eddy’s pastor—and for a time teacher—my father held her in the highest esteem—in fact he considered her, even at an early age, superior both intellectually and spiritually to any other woman in Tilton [then Sanbornton Bridge], and greatly enjoyed talking with her. It was in 1837 when, if I remember rightly, Mrs. Eddy was about fifteen [actually 16], that I first knew her, she being several years younger than myself. I well remember her gift of expression which was very marked, as girls at that time were not usually possessed of so large a vocabulary. She and my father used to converse on deep subjects—frequently (as I recall to mind, from remarks made by my father) too deep for me. . . .
If he were living to-day I am sure his recommendation of her would be unqualified. She stands out in my mind distinctly as his brightest pupil, and I also remember her great admiration for him. . . . I never heard a lisp against the good name of Miss Baker, but always praise for her superior abilities and scholarship, her depth and independence of thought, and not least, spiritual-mindedness.61
Mark and Abigail Baker united with the Congregational Church at Sanbornton on June 17, 1838, and on July 26 of the same year their youngest daughter was received into membership, the only one of the six Baker children to have joined the church up till then. In an interview which Mrs. Eddy gave in 1903, not long after Bartlett Corser had written the letter quoted above, she spoke of his father as the clergyman “who would not let me enter into the church unless I ● ● ●
60 An Account of the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary of the Congregational Church of Northfield and Tilton (Concord, NH: Republican Press Association, 1897), p. 25.
61 S. B. G. Corser, statement, 4 August 1902, L10809, MBEL [bracketed text Peel’s].