One of the heroines in a book written by her when she was a woman is described in this way: “She was well-read, well-bred, high-minded, high-principled, a little inclined to be ultra-romantic, maybe.” We may surely think of Harriet as fitting this definition, even including the romantic inclination--that is, she was fond of stories of adventure, and was full of high feelings and enthusiasms. It would not be strange if the story-loving side of her nature bloomed a little shyly, since it had been almost starved. But it could not die. This spirit of lofty enthusiasm is illustrated by what she felt when as a little girl she first heard the Declaration of Independence read. She had but a vague idea of what it meant, but she gathered enough from the recital of the abuses and injuries that had driven her nation to revolt to feel herself swelling with indignation and ready with all her little mind and strength to applaud what seemed the resounding majesty of the Declaration. She was as ready as any one to pledge her life, fortune and sacred honor for such a cause. The heroic element was strong in her. It had come down from a line of Puritan ancestors; when the little girl heard that document read the spirit of her father swelled her little frame and brightened her cheeks and made her long to do something, she scarce knew what, to fight for her country or to make some declaration on her own account. This spirited child needed food for the imagination and fancy. She needed contact with the genius-lighted minds of the past. She had the power to assimilate a great amount of intellectual food, and she was hungry for it. The first satisfaction she had for her intense longing for what she would call interesting reading was in the “Pilgrim’s Progress” of Bunyan. We know how deeply this sank into her heart from the fact that in the books she wrote she often illuminates her thought by some apt illustration from the Pilgrim’s adventures. That her mind began very early to be haunted by those memories of the Pilgrim we know from one story about her youth. It is related that sometimes when she was prowling about in the back attic she would timidly open a little door that she found in the side of the chimney and would peer into the dark abyss that yawned within. Looking into that smoky and fearsome place, she was reminded of the door that the Pilgrim found in the walls of a certain valley, an opening which was the way that hypocrites go in at, whence issued the scent of brimstone together with a rumbling noise as of fire. As this thought came to Harriet she would shut to the little door in the chimney with a bang and run away to a more friendly part of the house, seeking some room that might perhaps be called a “Chamber of Peace.”