unstimulating existence.” All my father's daughters were given an academic education, sufficiently advanced so that they all taught school acceptably at various times and places. My brother Albert was a distinguished lawyer. In addition to my academic training, I was privately tutored by him. He was a member of the New Hampshire Legislature, and was nominated for Congress, but died before the election. McClure's Magazine calls my youngest brother, George Sullivan Baker, “a workman in a Tilton woolen mill.” As a matter of fact, he was joint partner with Alexander Tilton, and together they owned a large manufacturing establishment in Tilton, N. H. His military title of Colonel came from appointment on the staff of the Governor of New Hampshire. My oldest brother, Samuel D. Baker, carried on a large business in Boston, Mass.
Regarding the allegation by McClure's Magazine that all the family, “excepting Albert, died of cancer,” I will say that there was never a death in my father's family reported by physician or post-mortem examination as caused by cancer.
McClure's Magazine says that “the quarrels between Mary, a child ten years old, and her father, a gray-haired man of fifty, frequently set the house in an uproar,” and adds that these “fits” were diagnosed by Dr. Ladd as “hysteria mingled with bad temper.” My mother often presented my disposition as exemplary for her other children to imitate, saying, “When do you ever see Mary angry?” When the first edition of Science and Health was published, Dr. Ladd said to Alexander Tilton: “Read it, for it will do you good. It does not surprise me, it so resembles the author.”
