Eventually it was arranged that she should go to Portland. She was accompanied by her brother Samuel—evidence of the new sense of responsibility he had taken on with his second marriage—and his wife. This good lady, Mary Ann Cook Baker, had formerly been a missionary to the Indians and was the author of a biography of the respected missionary Judsons. She appears to have won the affection of all who knew her; and, on her side, she gave unstinted admiration and love to the sister-in-law whose ideas were to depart so radically from her own. For the rest of their long lives the two remained warm friends.¹¹⁰

Forty years later Mrs. Baker recalled how, as they prepared to go to Portland, she had to dress her sister-in-law “one article of dress, at a time and allowing her to rest, before proceeding further so feeble did she feel.”¹¹¹ It appears from her somewhat ambiguous account that Mrs. Patterson may first have gone to Samuel’s house at Boston to stay and thence by sea to Portland. She wrote of the invalid’s being helped into a carriage by Samuel and the driver, then driven “to the wharf for the night boat.”¹¹² On board, the stewardess helped Mrs. Baker look after her sister-in-law, and the latter’s high expectations of a coming cure doubtless helped to lighten the rigors of the voyage.

They arrived on October 10 in Longfellow’s

where quiet, tree-lined streets looked down on “the beauty and mystery of the ships.” The copper and gold of the trees, the blue of “the tranquil bay,” the “black wharves,” the “sailors with bearded lips”—here was a fresh scene to one long imprisoned in the lonely hills;¹¹³ and the strong, unaccustomed sea air may well have seemed to Mrs. Patterson like the  ● ● ●