some dirty palings, really to recover from an attack of giddiness, but pretending to look at a cabbage bed, she said to herself, as she stood with closed eyes, “My book will do yet.” The day of publication came at last, and Harriet, who had now rejoined her mother in Norwich, eagerly awaited the result. For about ten days she heard nothing, and she began to prepare herself to bear the disappointment of failure. Then at last a letter came, desiring her to make any corrections necessary for a second edition, as the publisher had hardly any copies left. He proposed, he said, to print an additional 2000. A postscript altered the number to 3000, a second postscript suggested 4000, and a third 5000! Her first feeling was that all her cares were now over. Whatever she had to say would now command a hearing, and her anxiety in future would be limited to making a good choice what to write about. Her series made a remarkable sensation; she was overwhelmed with praise from all quarters. Every one who had a hobby wanted her to write a tale to illustrate its importance. Advantageous offers from publishers poured in upon her. Lord Brougham, who was then the leading spirit of the Diffusion of Knowledge Society, declared that the whole Society had been “driven out of the field by a little deaf woman at Norwich.” It soon became evident, from the amount of political and literary work which was pressed upon her, that it was necessary for her to live in London. She accordingly took a small house in Fludyer Street, Westminster, in 1832, where she lived for seven years with her mother and aunt. No change could be greater than that from the provincial society in which she had been brought up, to that into which she was now welcomed. The best of London literary and political society was freely offered her. Cabinet ministers consulted her about their measures, and she enjoyed the acquaintance or friendship of all the foremost men and women of the day. But her head was not turned, and she was not spoiled. Sydney Smith said he had watched her anxiously for one season, and he then declared her unspoilable. The well-founded self-confidence that had made her say to herself, when almost any one else would have despaired, “My book will do yet,” prevented her from being dazzled by flattery and social distinction. She knew perfectly well what she could do and what she could not do. It made her angry to hear herself spoken of as a woman of genius; and in correcting a series of errors that had been made in an account given of her personal history in _Men of the Time_, she drily remarks, “Nobody has witnessed ‘flashes of wit’ from me. The giving me credit for wit shows that the writer is wholly unacquainted with me.”