But not to dwell upon the jocose side of things which kept the life in the Beecher home from becoming too serious and dull for the welfare of a company of little ones who were full of activity that needed outlet, it is plain that there were many broadening educative influences about Harriet Beecher in her own immediate home. These were also supplemented by others of a still wider character. When Harriet stayed at the Foote homestead in Nut Plains down near Guilford she slept in a bed that was hung with curtains of printed India linen on which bloomed strange mammoth plants with endless convolutions of branches in whose hollows appeared Chinese summer houses adorned with countless bells which gay Chinese attendants were ever in the act of ringing with a hammer. There were also sleepy-looking mandarins, and birds bigger than the mandarins. Drowsy little girl Harriet wondered why the bells did not ring when struck, and why the mandarins never came out of their summer houses. These Oriental treasures were brought by a famous sea-faring uncle of Harriet’s, Uncle Samuel Foote. He had been a sailor at sixteen, a commander of a ship at twenty-one. And he, of course, was Harriet’s hero of romance. He it was that brought the frankincense from Spain, the mementos of the Alhambra and of the ancient Moors. He sent mats and baskets, almonds and raisins from Mogadore, Oriental caps and slippers, South American ingots of silver and hammocks wrought by the Southern Indian tribes. And when he came speaking French and Spanish and full of the very atmosphere of a great and wonderful world that lay beyond the rims of the mountains, what stories of adventure the children could hear! What discussions about the respective value of Turk and Christian! What keen observations upon all life everywhere! And this uncle always brought a box of books, the newest thing, the latest. He it was that sent up into the hills the wonderful “Salmagundi” of Irving the minute it was printed. He kept track of everything that Roxana might desire and saw to it that she received the last word in philosophy, art and poetry.