The old Presbyterian parsonage where Harriet was born had in it one room that was the child's chief delight. This was her father's study, in a corner of which she loved to ensconce herself with her favorite books gathered around her, and read or day-dream, while her father sat opposite in his great writing-chair composing the sermon for the next Sunday. Children's books were not plentiful in those days, and Miss Edgeworth's _Tales_ and Cotton Mather's _Magnalia_ were her principal resource, until one joyful day, rummaging in a barrel of old sermons, she came upon a copy of _The Arabian Nights_. These flowers of fairy lore took healthy root in the imagination of the little Puritan child, whose mind had hitherto resembled the prim flower-beds of the New England gardens, where grew only native plants. The old stories opened a new world of thought, and into this unknown realm she entered, rambling amid such wonderful scenes that never again could their mysterious charm cease; when some time later her father came down from his study one day with a volume of _Ivanhoe_ in his hand, and said: "I did not intend that my children should ever read novels, but they must read Scott," another door into the realm of fairy was opened to the delighted child.
This power to lift and lose herself in a region of thought so different from her own, became thereafter the peculiar gift by which she was enabled to undertake the work which made her name distinguished.
The library corner, however, did not hold all the good things of life, only part of them. Outside was the happy world of a healthy country child, who grew as joyously as one of her own New England flowers. In the spring there were excursions in the woods and fields after the wild blossoms that once a year turned the country-side into fairy-land; in the summer was the joy of picnics in the old forests, and of fishing excursions along the banks of the streams; in the autumn came nutting parties, when the children ran races with the squirrels to see who could gather the most nuts; and in the winter, when the snow and ice covered the earth, life went on as gayly as ever, with coasting and snow-balling, and the many ways in which the child's heart tunes itself to the spirit of nature.