A frequent guest of the family was Professor Dyer H. Sanborn, who kept a private school to which the children of the wealthier families were sent to finish their studies. Boys were prepared by him for college and girls were given a certificate of graduation with academic honors. Mary Baker became his pupil and graduated from this school. Professor Sanborn was the author of a grammar and a man of literary tastes. He trained Mary particularly in rhetoric and corrected the faults which private study had engendered.
The Rev. Enoch Corser, pastor of the Tilton church for all the period of their residence at the farm, was also a frequent and honored guest of the Bakers. He was a man of liberal culture as may be imagined from the fact that he privately tutored his son Bartlett, sending him to college prepared to eliminate the first two years of Greek, Latin, and mathematics. This was Mary Baker’s pastor who first received her into communion. His son has declared his father’s disposition toward her to be one of highest esteem, deep admiration, and warm interest. This pastor regarded Mary as his special pupil and the brightest he ever had.
An intellectual comradeship grew up between Mary and her pastor who, as his son declared, preferred to talk with her to any one of his acquaintance. They discussed subjects too deep to be attractive to other members of the family, which the family freely and good-humoredly admitted. Walking up and down in the garden, this fine, old-school clergyman and the young poetess, as she was coming to be
