The “diploma” achieved, our young aspirant was bent upon seeing New Orleans before returning to her New England home. It was a season of the year not favorable for such travel, and, from some cause or another, she failed in inducing any of her friends to accompany her. To will and to do are synonymous with some; and so, Harriet Hosmer having set her mind upon an excursion down the Mississippi to the Crescent City, embarked herself one fine morning on board a steamer bound for New Orleans. The river was shallow, the navigation difficult; many a boat did our adventurous traveler pass high and dry; but fortune, as usual, was with her, and she reached her destination in safety. The weather was intensely warm, but, nothing daunted, our young friend saw all that was to be seen, returning at night to sleep on board the steamer as it lay in its place by the levee, and, at the expiration of a week, returning with it to St. Louis. Arrived there, instead of rejoining her friends, she took boat for the Falls of St. Anthony, on the Upper Mississippi, stopping, on the way, at Dubuque, to visit a lead mine, into which she descended by means of a bucket, and came very near an accident which must inevitably have resulted fatally; a catastrophe which, as no one knew where she was, would probably have remained a secret forever. At the Falls of St. Anthony, she went among the Indians, much to their surprise and amusement, and brought away with her a pipe, presented by the chief, in token of amity. She also achieved the ascent of a mountain never before undertaken by a female; and so delighted were the spectators with her courage and agility, that they insisted upon knowing her name, that the mountain might thenceforth be called after her. In a subsequent visit to St. Louis, Miss Hosmer found that her rustic admirers had been as good as their word, and “Hosmer’s Height” remains an evidence of “the little lady’s” ambition and courage. On her return to St. Louis, where her prolonged absence had created no little uneasiness, she remained but a short time, and, bidding farewell to her kind friends, retraced her steps homeward. This was in the autumn of 1851. No sooner had Harriet Hosmer reached home than she set to work to model an ideal bust of Hesper, continuing her anatomical studies with her cousin, and employing her intervals of leisure and rest in reading, riding, and boating. Now followed a period of earnest work, cheered and inspired by those visions of success, of purpose fulfilled, of high aims realized, which haunt the young and enthusiastic aspirant, and throw a halo round the youthful days of genius, lending a color to the whole career. As Lowell wisely and poetically says, “Great dreams preclude low ends.”