mother pride and instinct suppressed it. When she was at the
age of thirteen I saw much of Harriet. I remember no tenderness
towards her, but the same severity and sharpness of manner,
cleverness of management, and sarcastic observation of other
people's management. I thought Harriet at that time a clever
child, but an odd and wise one. She used then, I remember, to
be left much by herself, -- put aside, as it were. . . . . At that
time she was occasionally a little deaf. After this time I do not
remember hearing of her except at school at Bristol, -- of her
being happy there, and a great favourite. What a good thing, I
thought, for Harriet, that she has found friends of her own, and
encouragement: for I had a vague and private idea that she was
not developed at home. Next I was gratified and surprised to
receive a most affectionate letter from her, on an occasion of
severe affliction, and I was pleased to think I might find a
second friend in that family, -- her elder sister and myself
having been intimate for years. Then Harriet visited me, and
I began to like and understand her." This same friend saw
Harriet Martineau in various circumstances of trial and sor-
row, and says thereupon, "I frequently saw her own cheer-
ful simplicity and fortitude construed by others into cold-
ness and indifference. I did not generalize at the time as I
have since done, but I then learned that the heart runs the risk
of being thought cold which does not overrule and outstep
every other faculty and power. Folly, with a display of selfish
feeling, is excused; but the tenderest heart obeying a higher
command is not appreciated, except by those who know it inti-
mately."

Amid all the obstructions of this period of her early youth
she was in one thing most fortunate. Her strong intellectual
powers were committed to the training of a schoolmaster who
was a scholar, and in companionship with his boy pupils. Both
these circumstances insured her the inestimable advantage of a
thorough classical and mathematical groundwork of education,
freed from the mistake that there is a female road to knowledge.
Her delight in reading found its satisfaction in the best English
poetry, history, critical literature, and a political newspaper.

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