Mrs. Stowe herself tells us in “The Minister’s Wooing” what was thought to be the proper selection for the personal library of a well-taught young lady of those times. Upon the snowy cover of the small table under her looking-glass should lie “The Spectator,” “Paradise Lost,” “Shakespeare” and “Robinson Crusoe.” Beside them of course the Bible should rest. There should also be the works of Jonathan Edwards. Laid a little to one side, as perhaps of doubtful reputation, might be found the only novel which the stricter people in those days allowed for the reading of their daughters, that seven-volumed, trailing, tedious, delightful old bore, “Sir Charles Grandison”--a book whose influence was almost universal and might be traced even in the epistolary style of some grave divines. A story is told of a certain young lady of Litchfield, probably a devourer of such books as this, who was once going in the stage from Litchfield to Hartford and happened to have Miss Sally Pierce, the principal of the Female Academy, for traveling companion. Miss Pierce recommended to the young lady the purchase of “Wilberforce’s View.” The young lady took this advice, paying the sum of six shillings for the work. Miss Pierce also suggested the “Memoirs of Miss Susanna Anthony” which could be bought for three and six, and a book called “Reflections on Death” which she declared to be very interesting as well as instructive. We are not told that the young lady did not slip in also “The Lady of the Lake,” which was just then becoming a fashionable book in the hill towns of Connecticut, or even perhaps volume one of that great romance, “Sir Charles Grandison.” Harriet no doubt had books of the same solemn and metaphysical kind recommended to her by her beloved teacher, but decidedly not the seven-volume novel. We do not know that Harriet had a little room to herself and a small library of her own. But she must have read that classic novel some time, or how could she have pronounced it a bore? Besides this, we know that once when she was almost an old lady she stood on her feet with bonnet on and read a chapter of “Sir Charles” through to the end, oblivious of the fact that she was keeping a dinner party waiting for her to come. Fortunately for Harriet with her strong literary instincts, the tastes of her mother were more catholic than were those of her theological father; she included philosophical, scientific and poetic books among her favorites. In one of her letters to her sister-in-law she said: “May has, I suppose, told you of the discovery that the fixed alkalies are metallic oxyds. I first saw the notice in the _Christian Observer_ and have since seen it in the _Edinburgh Review_.” Her eager mind led her to add: “I think this is all the knowledge I have obtained in the whole circle of the arts and sciences of late; if you have been more fortunate, pray let me have the benefit.”