Harriet was a hard worker. She began at nine in the morning and worked until after dark, with only a half hour’s intermission at noon to swallow a little dinner--a very bad plan, by the way. She blamed herself for being absent-minded and making mistakes. No wonder she did these things! She was in school all day, either as pupil or as teacher. After a hastily snatched supper she read and made out exercises for her class for half an hour, and the rest of the evening she spent in preparing French and Italian lessons of her own. Sister Catherine was certainly a disciplinarian. She was also entirely original in her methods. There were no normal schools to teach her, and she had to develop her own ways of working. No one who does not know the educational situation of that day can imagine how daring it was in her to attempt all this. Many of her thoughts are a prophecy of present day ideals. She emphasized physical exercise, and this was by many thought dangerous, if not impious. She gave prizes for composition in verse. The girls were so enthusiastic in this work that they wrote their poetical effusions at night and rehearsed them to each other in the morning. They were then written out and brought to the teacher to have the ruthless knife of criticism applied. This work fell to the hands of Harriet and was a labor of love to her. Harriet had also a painting and drawing master and worked faithfully at these subjects. After a while she wrote to her grandmother in Guilford that she would send her a dish of fruit of her own painting, and begged her not to devour it in anticipation lest she should find it sadly tasteless in reality. But if she did find it so, she must excuse the defects for the sake of the poor young artist. Her painting made her think of her dear mother, who would have been most interested in her daughter’s efforts in this direction. Whatever artistic powers Harriet had, she wished to cherish for that mother’s sake. She told her grandmother that she was thinking more about that dearest of all earthly friends now that she was older and could understand her character better and appreciate her more. She thought that, had her mother lived, she might herself have been better and happier than she now was. By this we see that a shadow seemed to be coming over Harriet’s spirit. But in her mental powers the young student must have been advancing with great swiftness, for when she was only seventeen years old she thought of taking charge herself of a school in Groton where she went to visit her brother George. After consulting her father, and especially Catherine, however, she decided not to undertake the responsibility, and abandoned the project.