Thus they parted. The day and hour arrived, but no doctor made his appearance. That evening Miss Hosmer rode into Boston, and next morning the papers announced the decease of Dr. ------. Half Boston and its neighborhood rushed to the physician’s house to leave cards and messages of condolence for the family, and to inquire into the cause of the sudden and lamentable event. In 1850, being then nineteen, Harriet Hosmer left Lenox. Mrs. Sedgwick’s judicious treatment, and the motive and encouragement supplied by Mrs. Kemble, had given the right impetus to that activity of mind and body which needed only guiding and directing into legitimate channels. She returned to her father’s house, at Watertown, to pursue her art-studies, and to fit herself for the career she had resolved upon following. There was at this time a cousin of Miss Hosmer’s studying with her father, between whom and herself existed a hearty _camaraderie_. Together the two spent many hours in dissecting legs and arms, and in making acquaintance with the human frame, Dr. Hosmer having erected a small building at the bottom of his garden to facilitate these studies. Those were days of close study and application. Lessons in drawing and modeling--for which our young student had to repair to Boston, a distance of seven or eight miles--and anatomical studies with her cousin, were alternated with the inevitable rides and boating on which her father wisely insisted. The River Charles runs immediately before the house, and on this river Harriet Hosmer had a boat-house, containing a safe, broad boat, and a fragile, poetical-looking gondola, with silvered prow, the delight of her heart, and the terror of her less experienced and unswimming friends. The life of the young girl was at this period full of earnest purpose and noble ambition, and the untiring energy and perseverance which distinguish her now in so remarkable a degree were at this time evidenced and developed. Having modeled one or two copies from the antique, she next tried her hand on a portrait-bust, and then cut Canova’s bust of Napoleon in marble, working it entirely with her own hands that she might make herself mistress of the process. Her father, seeing her devoted to her studies, seconded them in every possible way, and proposed to send her to his friend, Dr. M‘Dowell, Professor of Anatomy in the St. Louis College, that she might go through a course of regular instruction, and be thus thoroughly grounded for the branch of art she had chosen. The young artist was but too glad to close with the offer; and, in the autumn of 1850, we find her at St. Louis, residing in the family of her favorite schoolmate from Lenox, winning the hearts of all its members by her frank, joyous nature, and steady application, and securing, in the head of it, what she heartily and energetically calls “the best friend I ever had.”