One Sunday evening, shortly after the arrival of the new mother, Dr. Beecher, who was at that time given to an undiscriminating admiration for the works of the great Jonathan Edwards, was reading to her from a volume of sermons by that divine. It happened to be the sermon with the pungent title, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God." Harriet was curled up on the sofa, apparently absorbed in a book of her own. Drawn to observe closely her new mother, she saw that she seemed to be listening with abhorrence and suppressed emotion. A bright red spot suffused each cheek, every moment growing brighter and redder. Finally, rising to her stately height, she swept out of the room, saying as she went: "Mr. Beecher, I will not listen to another word! Why, it is horrible! It is a slander on the character of my heavenly Father!" Harriet was impressed with the stupefaction pictured on her father's face. If a bucket of ice-water had been thrown over him, the effect could not have been more startling. He probably never again read Edwards' lurid pages with the same ease of mind as formerly. Doubtless this incident placed his foot on the first rung of a ladder which the ultra-orthodox of the period thought led anywhere but to heaven. Harriet Porter, although orthodox, was human, and she belonged to a different age from Edwards.