Writing to her great friend, Georgiana May, in 1832, Harriet told her of a sun-dial inscription that her Uncle Samuel Foote, who was sitting by her side as she wrote, has just been quoting for her benefit. It ran thus: _Horas non numero nisi serenas_--I count the fair hours only. This she said she was taking for her own motto. She had determined, she told her friend, to come out of herself more, to cultivate a general spirit of kindliness toward everybody, to hold out her hand to the right and to the left. To what good purpose she now put this resolution into effect is shown by the fact that her pupils at Hartford remember her to this day as one who took the greatest interest in each one’s affairs, laying aside her own matters and talking over the likes and aims of others. And perhaps she did not find it so hard after all to keep from shrinking into a corner. Perhaps she found a pleasure in meeting new and strange people and in trying to be friendly with them. She seems to have found that these social contacts, though not having any great meaning in themselves, yet could form a very pretty flower border to the way of life. A wonderful discovery for one to make whose nature, did she but know it, was one great tide of loving impulses, whose heart was vast in its all-including kindliness! CHAPTER IX A PILGRIMAGE In 1832, when Harriet Beecher was twenty-one years old, a great change took place in her fortunes. She was transplanted from her New England environment into the more dynamic life of the great, growing west. But of course we must not expect to find the west of eighty years ago very much like the west of to-day. In 1832 the middle of Ohio seemed separated by vaster distances and was more difficult of access than any part of our country this side of the Pacific Coast seems to-day. This alteration in our point of view has come about because there never has been a time or place in the history of the world when the growth of a region has been so swift or so picturesque as in that part of our country that we now call the “middle west.” Of those wonderful things that were to take place in the advancement of our country’s resources and welfare, the building of schools, churches, libraries and institutions of all kinds, and the development of national spirit, Harriet Beecher’s father seems to have had a prevision. He saw the great possibilities in the growing western country, and felt a burning desire to have a share in upbuilding the best things there. His feeling in regard to this great work is illustrated in one little page of his biography. In order to impress the full meaning of prayer upon his mind and heart, Dr. Beecher would sometimes write it out in his diary; and in one of these prayers written at about this time he said: “If there be anything which by living I can do, or by dying I can do, to mitigate on earth the miseries of sin and to save my country and to save the world, then speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.”