Harriet was a quiet, thoughtful, old-fashioned child, with quaint speech, odd and original ideas, delicate health and extreme sensibility to criticism.

At 22, she relinquished her cherished purpose of becoming a missionary, and married Azro Goff, a young merchant and postmaster in the town of her residence, but continued her studies.

A few years later, they were passengers upon the steamer Northern Indiana when it was burned upon Lake Erie, with the loss of over 30 lives; and while clinging to a floating plank new views of human relations and enforced isolations opened before her, and she there resolved henceforth to follow the leanings of her own conscience.

She entered the temperance lecture field in 1870, and traveled throughout the United States, in Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, speaking more or less extensively in all, and under various auspices.

In 1872, she was delegated by three societies of Philadelphia, where she then resided, to attend the prohibition convention in Columbus, Ohio, and there, she became the first woman ever placed upon a nominating committee to name candidates for the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States.

[1] Adhering to the British branch in the rupture of the International Organisation of Good Templars, Goff was in 1878 elected Right Worthy Grand Vice-Templar, and the following year, was re-elected in Liverpool, England, over so popular a candidate as Margaret Bright Lucas, on account of her acceptable and still desired services in the supervision and secretaryship of the order in America.

Her especial work from 1886 to 1892 was for the employment of police matrons in Brooklyn, New York, her place of residence for the previous 14 years, whence she removed to Washington, D.C. in 1892.

(Philadelphia, 1876) and early the next year, she became traveling correspondent of the New York Weekly Witness," besides contributing to Arthur's Lady's Home Magazine, the Sunday-school Times, the Independent and other journals.

Further than this, although set forth as a cause of action, the story is about a poor erring girl, a Magdalen, who finds it very hard to lead a reformed life.