Catherine faced her grief bravely as her lover had faced death bravely. But added to her natural grief for the loss of her lover was a tormenting fear for the welfare of his soul, for she feared lest the spiritual conditions that she had been accustomed to regard as essential had not been met by her lover. Her disturbance was not quieted when she went to live for some years with the parents of her lost lover and while there listened to one of the strictest of the early theologians. Almost crushed in her grief, her strong original mind nevertheless grappled with the problems of death and the after-life. She used her great power in metaphysical analysis in endless discussion, exchanging many long letters with her father, whose loving sympathy was a tower of strength to her in this crisis. After a long period of darkness and struggle, Catherine took the wisest course that the profoundest philosophy could suggest: she determined to find happiness in living to do good. This thought she clung to and in it she found comfort. She looked about her to see what use she could make of her life. Writing to her father, she said that she did not see any very extensive sphere of usefulness for a single woman except in teaching, and asked his advice about starting a school or seminary, something like the Litchfield Female Academy, perhaps in Hartford. Her father answered with characteristic energy that if she were going to have a school it should be a good one. She should not engage in it listlessly, expecting to superintend, and do a little, and have the weight of the school come on others. He would be ashamed, he said, to have her keep only a commonplace, middling sort of a school. Unless she was willing to put her talents and strength into it, it would be better not to begin. He called the spent energies of the daughter into line and made them march. He himself went straight to Hartford to look over the ground and see whether there was a good opening for a school there. Catherine felt that her own enthusiasms would rise to the occasion. She went to Hartford, canvassed the ground, gathered a company of pupils, and was eager to start. She resolutely prepared a text-book on chemistry, one on natural philosophy, and one on logic. Arithmetic and algebra and a part of geometry she also thoroughly reviewed. Under such a character as this Harriet was now to be trained.