The latter died when Harriet was four years of age. Dr. Hosmer determined to save his daughters from the insidious disease which had carried away his two sons as well as his wife, and so instituted for them a system of physical training, insisting upon out-of-door sports and amusements. Notwithstanding all his efforts, however, the elder daughter died, leaving Harriet as the sole surviving child. Dr. Hosmer, grieved, but undismayed, renewed his endeavors to strengthen Harriet's vigor and increase her powers of endurance. Harriet took to this treatment very kindly, spending many joyous days tramping through the woods with her dogs. All the while, she observed keenly, acquiring a knowledge of plant and animal life, and storing up impressions of the beautiful and harmonious in Nature. Her home was situated on the Charles River. She had her own boathouse and bathhouse. In summer she rowed and swam; in winter she skated. No nook or corner of the country round was unknown to her; the steepest hills, the wildest and most rugged regions, were her familiar haunts. A madcap was Harriet, and the sober neighbors were often astonished and even scandalized, by the undignified speed she made on her beautiful horse. This kind of life would always have satisfied her, and Harriet thought it nothing short of an affliction when her father said she must go to school. Was she not getting her education in riding about the country? However, to school she went, in Boston, for several years. But when she reached the age of fifteen, Dr. Hosmer became convinced that Harriet would never thrive, mentally or physically, unless she were left free to follow her own bent. And perhaps he never in his life made a wiser decision. So he sent the wild girl to the home school of Mrs. Charles Sedgwick of Lenox. Here she had the benefits of cultured and elevating surroundings, together with motherly care, and also of the out-of-door life so dear to her heart and so necessary to her well-being. Lenox, in the beautiful Berkshire Hills, was at that time a primitive village, though it has since grown into a fashionable summer resort. There, in Mrs. Sedgwick's refined and peaceful home, Harriet acquired her real education from listening to the conversations of such men and women as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederika Bremer and Fanny Kemble. This stimulus was all Harriet needed to develop in her the idea of doing some serious work in life. She began to give a great deal of time to drawing, her study of nature and her splendid powers of observation being of great assistance to her here.