not withdraw
the church, not even if they constituted a majority.

The correctness of this decision does not concern us here; it is
enough that Dr. Beecher thought it wrong and that Harriet thought it
wrong. "The effect of all this," she says, "upon my father's mind was
to keep him at a white heat of enthusiasm. His family prayers at this
period, departing from the customary forms of unexcited hours, became
often upheavings of passionate emotion, such as I shall never forget.
'Come, Lord Jesus,' he would say, 'here where the bones of the fathers
rest, here where the crown has been torn from thy brow, come and
recall thy wandering children. Behold thy flock scattered upon the
mountain--these sheep, what have they done! Gather them, gather them,
O good shepherd, for their feet stumble upon the dark mountains.'"

The fierce heat of this period was too much for a tender plant like
Harriet. For her state of mind, even Catharine thought the Boston home
life was not entirely suitable. It would be better for her in
Hartford. "Harriet will have young society here which she cannot have
at home, and I think cheerful and amusing friends will do much for
her." Catharine had received a letter from Harriet which, she says,
"made me feel uneasy," as well it might. Harriet had written her
sister: "I don't know as I am fit for anything, and I have thought
that I could wish to die young and let the remembrance of me and my
faults perish in the grave.... Sometimes I could not sleep, and have
groaned and cried till midnight, while in the daytime I tried to
appear cheerful, and succeeded so well that papa reproved me for
laughing so much." Life was too serious to permit even an affectation
of gaiety. "The atmosphere of that period," says Mrs. Field, "and the
terrible arguments of her father and of her sister Catharine were
sometimes more than she could endure." Her brother Edward was helpful
and comforting. She thanks him for helping her solve some of her
problems, but the situation was critical: "I feared that if you left
me thus I might return to the same dark, desolate state in which I had
been all summer. I felt that my immortal interest, my happiness for
both worlds, was depending on the turn my feelings might take."

Dr. Beecher was too much absorbed with his mission to observe what was
going on in his own family, unless there chanced to be an unexpected
outburst of gaiety. "Every leisure hour was beset by people who came
with earne