Harriet’s elementary education was the best afforded by the private school system of the period. In 1840 she entered the Emma Willard Female Seminary at Troy, New York. There she studied for a year, and then entered upon what proved to be her life work of female education. Her first year of teaching was in a young ladies’ school in New York City. For two years she served as governess for a family in Charleston, South Carolina. It was while there that she wrote to her youngest sister a most remarkable letter of religious importunity. In the winter of 1843 a great revival had aroused the little church at Waterford under the pastor, Rev. Reuben Smith, in which sixty-nine were converted. Among these were her father and two brothers, all of whom united with the church. Having received news of this awakening, Harriet sent to her sister, the only member of the family not yet in the Church, a letter carefully printed so as to be legible to the girl of ten years. It was a letter with a purpose. It was an affectionate entreaty for the sister to become a Christian. Concisely but clearly she explained what it meant to be a Christian, and then gently and with fervour urged a prompt decision for Christ. That letter was not void of its purpose, and all these eighty years since it has been treasured by the recipient as a memento of a loving, consecrated sister. The Pettit family did not remain long in Waterford after their return. In 1844 they moved to Newark, New Jersey, and there became identified with the Second Presbyterian Church, of which at the time the pastor was a relative, the Rev. Ebenezer Cheever, who had formerly been their pastor also at Waterford. Thereupon, Harriet came to Newark and set up a small school for girls in her home. In 1848 she was called to be assistant in the female seminary at Steubenville, Ohio. In the fall of 1851 she returned to Newark and opened, under her own management, a “Select School for Young Ladies,” which she continued up to the time of her marriage. During these later years she was active in the work of the Second Church, serving as joint superintendent of the Sunday school. On Oct. 24, 1855, her father died, leaving Harriet alone with their mother and her youngest sister. MARRIAGE It was at this juncture of the family affairs, two days after the father’s death, that Harriet received an unexpected call from her friend of former years, Dr. S. R. House, then home on a furlough from Siam. Writing later to a friend she comments: “It is but two years this morning since my good husband called at 373 Broad Street, Newark, to see a lady on very particular business. Only two years,—and fifteen months of that time I have been in the city of Bangkok. Does not this speak well for Samuel’s despatch of business sometimes? (Then quoting a bit of doggerel which he had once written:)