woman, a stranger, came to my grandmother's door, and told her that she had been led by the spirits to come to her house, for the reason that it was "a nice, harmonious home." My grandmother, who was sympathetic and hospitable, and, above all, a devoted Spiritualist, who would never turn another Spiritualist away, upon hearing this, exclaimed, "Glory to God! Come right in!" The woman thus admitted told my grandmother that she was Mrs. Mary Glover, a Spiritualist, and that she had been drawn as above described to my grandmother's house. Mrs. Glover did not explain further why she came and did not say from what place she had come. My grandmother gave her the use of the bedroom over the spiritual room, and also the use of the spiritual room. Here grandmother and Mrs. Glover continued to hold spiritualistic'séances, in which Mrs. Glover took an active part, passing into the trance state and giving what grandmother believed to be communications from the spirits.
Mrs. Glover became permanently settled at Grandmother Webster's house. She was treated as a guest, was waited upon, and was cared for in every respect. My Grandfather Webster, coming home and finding Mrs. Glover established in the house, was displeased because she was there. He told my grandmother that he did not want Mrs. Glover to remain. . . . But Mrs. Glover continued to live in the house, and after a few months, during which my grandmother's admiration for Mrs. Glover had begun to grow less, Mrs. Glover informed my grandmother that she had learned a new science which she thought was something beyond Spiritualism. She said she had learned it from Dr. Quimby of Portland, Maine, and that she had brought copies of some of his manuscripts with her. She talked about it and read the manuscripts to my grandmother, who did not, however, believe that the "science" was an improvement or a step beyond Spiritualism. From that time forward Mrs. Glover talked of Quimby's science. She was writing what she told grandmother was a revision of the Bible. She always sat in the spiritual chair at the spiritual table in grandmother's spiritual room to do her writing, and sometimes after she had written for hours, she would gather up all the pages she had filled with writing and tear them up, because she could not make them read as she wished.
My father, William R. Ellis, was in 1867 living in New York, with his three children—myself, my sister, and my brother. My mother had died three or four years before. Our family had always spent the summer school vacation at my grandparents' home in Amesbury, Mass., and when it was time for us to leave New York, my father always went to Amesbury in advance of the rest of us, in order to clear my grandmother's house of broken-down Spiritualists and sick persons, so that we might have enough room in the house and because he thought the atmosphere of so much sickness and Spiritualism was unwholesome for young children.
