In 1833, then, and for some years thereafter, the two sisters labored for the success of the school in Cincinnati. Harriet, with characteristic energy, threw herself into the work. As the work of the school increased she lived a life of incessant labor. What she tried to do was enough to wreck the health of the most sturdy. Her whole time was absorbed with her efforts for the new school. Even when on Sunday she took advantage of the day of rest to lay aside her cares, the ill feelings that disturbed her took away the rest and filled the hours with misery. She had everything but good health. She felt as if she were scarcely alive, and there was great danger that the old morbid feelings would return. Again we find her mind and heart suffering from the state of her health and physical ability threatened by excessive overwork. About this time she was reading the life of Madam de Staël and “Corinne.” The work moved her intensely. It is interesting to see how she accounted for the great effect it had upon her emotions. She placed herself at once in the environment of her nation and saw how she herself illustrated a national characteristic. The effect of republican government, she reasoned, is to demand rigid forms of conduct. The emotions thus constantly repressed burn inwardly all the more. They burn to the very soul, leaving only dust and ashes, she thought. At any rate this seemed to her to be the case with herself. Tired to the bone, she felt that her soul was withered and exhausted. She wrote to Georgiana, her beloved friend, with whom she still shared all her deepest thoughts: “All that is enthusiastic, all that is impassioned, in admiration of nature, of writing, of character, in devotional thought and emotion, or in the emotions of affection, I have felt with vehement and absorbing intensity, felt till my mind is exhausted, and seems to be sinking into deadness. Half of my time I am glad to remain in a listless vacancy, to busy myself with trifles, since thought is pain, and emotion is pain.”