Harriet’s first attempt at authorship was undertaken at the age of nineteen; she was tenderly devoted to her brother James, who was two years her junior. When he left home for college, the brightness of her life departed; he told her she must not permit herself to be so miserable, and advised her to take refuge, each time he left her, in some new pursuit; her first new pursuit was writing, and with a beating heart she posted her manuscript to the Editor of the _Monthly Repository_, a Unitarian magazine of that day. She adopted the signature of “V. of Norwich”; all authors will sympathise with what she felt when her manuscript was accepted, and she saw herself for the first time in print. She had not told any member of her family of her enterprise. Imagine therefore her delight when her eldest brother, whom she regarded with the utmost veneration, selected this article by V. of Norwich for special commendation, reading passages from it aloud, and calling upon Harriet to say whether she did not think it first-rate. After a brief attempt to keep her secret, she blurted out, “I never could baffle anybody. The truth is, that paper is mine.” The kind brother read on in silence, and as she was going he laid his hand on her shoulder and said gravely (calling her “dear” for the first time), “Now, dear, leave it to other women to make shirts and darn stockings; and do you devote yourself to this.” “I went home,” she adds, “in a sort of dream, so that the squares of the pavement seemed to float before my eyes. That evening made me an authoress.”