"Never did stepmother make a prettier or sweeter impression. The
morning following her arrival we looked at her with awe. She seemed to
us so fair, so delicate, so elegant, that we were almost afraid to go
near her. We must have appeared to her as rough, red-faced, country
children, honest, obedient, and bashful. She was peculiarly dainty and
neat in all her ways and arrangements, and I used to feel breezy,
rough, and rude in her presence.

"In her religion she was distinguished for a most unfaltering Christ-
worship. She was of a type noble but severe, naturally hard, correct,
exact and exacting, with intense natural and moral ideality. Had it
not been that Doctor Payson had set up and kept before her a tender,
human, loving Christ, she would have been only a conscientious bigot.
This image, however, gave softness and warmth to her religious life,
and I have since noticed how her Christ-enthusiasm has sprung up in
the hearts of all her children."

In writing to her old home of her first impressions of her new one,
Mrs. Beecher says: "It is a very lovely family, and with heartfelt
gratitude I observed how cheerful and healthy they were. The sentiment
is greatly increased, since I perceive them to be of agreeable habits
and some of them of uncommon intellect."

This new mother proved to be indeed all that the name implies to her
husband's children, and never did they have occasion to call her aught
other than blessed.

Another year finds a new baby brother, Frederick by name, added to the
family. At this time too we catch a characteristic glimpse of Harriet
in one of her sister Catherine's letters. She says: "Last week we