Ten American Girls From History

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In her own sketch of those early days, she says:

"Running away was one of my great delights, and I still enjoy sudden
flights out of the nest to look about this very interesting world and
then go back to report!"

On one of her investigating tours, she met some Irish children whose
friendliness delighted her, and she spent a wonderful day with them,
sharing their dinner of cold potatoes, salt fish and bread crusts.
Then--delightful pastime--they all played in the ash-heaps for some
time, and took a trip to the Common together. But when twilight came,
her new friends deserted her, leaving her a long way from home, and
little Louisa began to think very longingly of her mother and sister.
But as she did not know how to find her way back she sat down on a
door-step, where a big dog was lying. He was so friendly that she
cuddled up against his broad back and fell asleep. How long she slept
she did not know, but she was awakened by the loud ringing of a bell,
and a man's deep voice calling:

"Little girl lost! Six years old--in a pink frock, white hat and new
green shoes. Little girl lost! Little girl lost!"

It was the town crier, and as he rang his bell and gave his loud cry,
out of the darkness he heard a small voice exclaim:

"Why, dat's _me_!"

With great difficulty the crier was able to persuade the child to
unclasp her arms from the neck of the big friendly dog, but at last
she left him, and was taken to the crier's home and "feasted
sumptuously on bread and molasses in a tin plate with the alphabet
round it," while her frantic family was being notified. The unhappy
ending to that incident is very tersely told by Louisa, who says: "My
fun ended the next day, when I was tied to the arm of the sofa to
repent at leisure!"

That the six years spent in Boston were happy ones, and that the
budding spirit of Louisa was filled with joy at merely being alive,
was shown one morning, when, at the breakfast table, she suddenly
looked up with an all-embrasive smile and exclaimed:

"I love everybody in _dis_ whole world!"

Despite the merriment which was always a feature of the Alcott home,
as they were all blessed with a sense of humor which helped them over
many a hard place, there was an underlying anxiety for Mr. and Mrs.
Alcott, as the school was gradually growing smaller and there was
barely enough income to support their family, to which a third
daughter, Elizabeth, the "Beth" of _Little Women_, had been added
recently. During those days they lived on very simple fare, which the
children disliked, as their rice had to be eaten without sugar and
their mush without butter or molasses. Nor did Mr. Alcott allow meat
on his table, as he thought it wrong to eat any creature which had to
be killed for the purpose. An old family friend who lived at a Boston
hotel sympathized strongly with the children's longing for sweets, and
every day at dinner she saved them a piece of pie or cake, which
Louisa would call for, carrying a bandbox for the purpose. The friend
was in Europe for years, and when she returned Louisa Alcott had
become famous. Meeting her on the street one day, Louisa greeted her
old friend, eagerly:

"Why, I did not think you would remember me!" said the old lady.

"Do you suppose I shall ever forget that bandbox!" was the quick
reply.

As time went on, Mr. Alcott's school dwindled until he had only five
scholars, and three of them were his own children. Something new had
to be tried, and quickly, so the family moved out of the city, into a
small house at Concord, Mass., which had an orchard and a garden, and,
best of all, the children had a big barn, where they gave all sorts of
entertainments; mostly plays, as they were born actors. Their mother,
or "Marmee," as the girls called her, loved the fun as well as they
did, and would lay aside her work at any moment to make impossible
costumes for fairies, gnomes, kings or peasants, who were to take the
principal parts in some stirring melodrama written by the girls
themselves, or some adaptation of an old fairy tale. They acted Jack
the Giant-killer in fine style, and the giant came tumbling headlong
from a loft when Jack cut down the squash-vine running up a ladder and
supposed to represent the immortal beanstalk. At other performances
Cinderella rolled away in an impressive pumpkin, and one of their star
plays was a dramatic version of the story of the woman who wasted her
three wishes, in which a long black pudding was lowered by invisible
hands and slowly fastened onto her nose.

But though the big barn often echoed with the sound of merry voices,
at other times the girls dressed up as pilgrims, and journeyed over
the hill with scrip and staff, and cockle shells in their hats;
fairies held their revels among the whispering birches, and strawberry
parties took place in the rustic arbor of the garden.

And there we find eight-year-old Louisa writing her verses to the
robin, with genius early beginning to burn in the small head which
later proved to be so full of wonderful material for the delight of
young people.

"Those Concord days were the happiest of my life," says Miss Alcott.
"We had charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings, Goodwins
and Hawthornes, with the illustrious parents and their friends to
enjoy our pranks and share our excursions.... My wise mother, anxious
to give me a strong body to support a lively brain, turned me loose in
the country and let me run wild, learning of Nature what no books can
teach, and being led--as those who truly love her seldom fail to
be--'through Nature up to Nature's God.'"

The Alcott children were encouraged to keep diaries in which they
wrote down their thoughts and feelings and fancies, and even at that
early age Louisa's journal was a record of deep feelings and of a
child's sacred emotions. In one of her solemn moods, she makes this
entry:

"I had an early run in the woods before the dew was off the grass. The
moss was like velvet, and as I ran under the arch of yellow and red
leaves I sang for joy, my heart was so bright and the world so
beautiful. I stopped at the end of the walk and saw the sunshine out
over the wide 'Virginia meadows.'

"It seemed like going through a dark life or grave into heaven
beyond. A very strange and solemn feeling came over me as I stood
there, with no sound but the rustle of the pines, no one near me, and
the sun so glorious, as for me alone. It seemed as if I _felt_ God as
I never did before, and I prayed in my heart that I might keep that
happy sense of nearness all my life."

To that entry there is a note added, years later: "_I have_, for I
most sincerely think that the little girl 'got religion' that day in
the wood, when dear Mother Nature led her to God."--L. M. A. 1885.

That deep religious note in Louisa Alcott's nature is very marked and
is evident in all of her work, but, on the other hand, she had a
sparkling wit and such a keen sense of humor that in her blackest
moods she could always see something funny to amuse her, and
frequently laughed at her own expense.

That her conscience was as active as her mind and her body is shown by
one of her "private plays," which she makes Demi describe in _Little
Men_. He says:

"I play that my mind is a round room, and my soul is a little sort of
creature with wings that lives in it. The walls are full of shelves
and drawers, and in them I keep my thoughts, and my goodness and
badness and all sorts of things. The goods I keep where I can see
them, and the bads I lock up tight, but they get out, and I have to
keep putting them in and squeezing them down, they are so strong. The
thoughts I play with when I am alone or in bed, and I make up and do
what I like with them. Every Sunday I put my room in order, and talk
with the little spirit that lives there, and tell him what to do. He
is very bad sometimes and won't mind me, and I have to scold him."

Truly a strange game for a child to play, but the Alcotts were brought
up to a reverent knowledge of their souls as well as their bodies, and
many a sober talk at twilight did mother or father have with the
daughters to whom the experience of the older generation was helpful
and inspiring. A very happy family they were, despite frequent lack of
luxuries and even necessities, but loyalty and generosity as their
marked characteristics. No matter how little money or food an Alcott
had, it was always shared with any one who had less, and the largest
share was usually given away.

On Louisa's fourth birthday, she tells of a feast given in her honor
in her father's school-room in Masonic Temple. All the children were
there, and Louisa wore a crown of flowers and stood upon a table to
give a cake to each child as they all marched around the table. "By
some oversight," says Louisa, "the cakes fell short, and I saw that if
I gave away the last one, _I_ should have none. As I was queen of the
revel, I felt that I ought to have it, and held on to it tightly,
until my mother said: 'It is always better to give away than to keep
the nice things; so I know my Louy will not let the little friend go
without.'" She adds: "The little friend received the dear plummy cake,
and I ... my first lesson in the sweetness of self-denial--a lesson
which my dear mother illustrated all her long and noble life."

At another time a starving family was discovered, when the Alcotts,
forming in a procession, carried their own breakfast to the hungry
ones. On one occasion, when a friend had unexpected guests arrive for
dinner, too late to secure any extra provisions, the Alcotts with
great glee lent their dinner to the thankful hostess, and thought it a
good joke. Again, on a snowy Saturday night, when their wood-pile was
extra low, and there was no way of getting any more that week, a poor
child came to beg a little, as their baby was sick and the father on a
spree with all his wages. At first Mrs. Alcott hesitated, as it was
bitterly cold and Abba May, the little baby sister, was very young,
but Mr. Alcott decided the matter with his usual kindly optimism.

"Give half our stock and trust in Providence; the weather will
moderate or wood will come," he declared. And the wood was lent, Mrs.
Alcott cheerily agreeing: "Well, their need is greater than ours. If
our half gives out we can go to bed and tell stories!"

A little later in the evening, while it was still snowing heavily, and
the Alcotts were about to cover their fire to keep it, a farmer who
was in the habit of supplying them with wood knocked at the door and
asked anxiously:

"Wouldn't you like me to drop my load of wood here? It would
accommodate me, and you need not hurry to pay for it. I started for
Boston with it but the snow is drifting so fast, I want to go home."

"Yes," answered Mr. Alcott, and as the man went away, he turned to his
wife and exclaimed: "Didn't I tell you that wood would come if the
weather didn't moderate?"

Again, a tramp asked Mr. Alcott to lend him five dollars. As he had
only a ten-dollar bill, the dear man at once offered that, asking to
have the change brought back as soon as possible. Despite the
disbelief of his family in the tramp's honesty, the man did bring the
five-dollar bill soon with profuse thanks, and the gentle
philosopher's faith in human nature was not crushed.

Still another experiment in generosity proved a harder one in its
results to the Alcotts, when Mrs. Alcott allowed some poor emigrants
to rest in her garden while she treated them to a bountiful meal.
Unfortunately for their generous benefactor, in return they gave
small-pox to the entire family, and, although the girls had light
cases, Mr. and Mrs. Alcott were very sick and, as Miss Alcott records
later: "We had a curious time of exile, danger and trouble." She adds:
"No doctors and all got well."

When Louisa Alcott was almost ten years old, and Anna twelve, Mr.
Alcott took a trip to England, hoping to interest the people there in
his new theories of education and of living. So enthusiastically and
beautifully did he present his theories that he won many converts, and
one of them, a Mr. Lane, returned to America with him to help him
found a colony on the new ideas, which were more ideal than practical,
and so disapproved of by Mr. Alcott's friends, who thought him foolish
to waste time and money on them.

However, after months of planning, Mr. Alcott, Mr. Lane and other
enthusiasts decided to buy an estate of one hundred acres near Harvard
Village, Mass., and establish the colony. The place was named
"Fruitlands," in anticipation of future crops, and the men who were to
start the community were full of hope and enthusiasm, in which Mrs.
Alcott did not share, as she knew her husband's visionary nature too
well not to fear the result of such an experiment. However, she aided
in making the plan as practical as she could, and drew such a rosy
picture of their new home to the children that they expected life at
Fruitlands to be a perpetual picnic.

Alas for visions and for hopes! Although life at Fruitlands had its
moments of sunshine and happiness, yet they were far overbalanced by
hard work, small results and increasing worry over money matters, and
at last, after four years of struggle to make ends meet, Mr. Alcott
was obliged to face the fact that the experiment had been an utter
failure, that he had exhausted his resources of mind, body and estate.
It was a black time for the gentle dreamer, and for a while it seemed
as if despair would overwhelm him. But with his brave wife to help him
and the children's welfare to think of, he shook off his despondency
bravely, and decided to make a fresh start. So Mrs. Alcott wrote to
her brother in Boston for help, sold all the furniture they could
spare, and went to Still River, the nearest village to Fruitlands, and
engaged four rooms. "Then on a bleak December day the Alcott family
emerged from the snowbank in which Fruitlands, now re-christened
_Apple Stump_ by Mrs. Alcott, lay hidden. Their worldly goods were
piled on an ox-sled, the four girls on the top, while father and
mother trudged arm in arm behind, poorer indeed in worldly goods, but
richer in love and faith and patience, and alas, experience."

After a winter in Still River they went back to Concord, where they
occupied a few rooms in the house of a sympathetic friend--not all
their friends were sympathetic, by any means, as most of them had
warned Mr. Alcott of this ending to his experiment. But all were
kindly as they saw the family take up life bravely in Concord again,
with even fewer necessities and comforts than before. Both Mr. and
Mrs. Alcott did whatever work they could find to do, thinking nothing
too menial if it provided food and clothing for their family.
Naturally the education of the children was rather fragmentary and
insufficient, but it developed their own powers of thinking. Through
the pages of their diaries in which they wrote regularly, and which
were open to their mother and father, they learned to express their
thoughts clearly on all subjects. Also they were encouraged to read
freely, while only the best books were within their reach. Louisa's
poetic and dramatic efforts were not ridiculed, but criticized as
carefully as if they had been masterpieces, so she had no fear of
expressing her deepest thoughts, but acted out her own nature freely
and fearlessly.

In fact the four daughters were happy, wholesome, hearty girls, whose
frolics and pastimes took such unique forms that people wondered
whether they were the result of Mr. Alcott's theories, and Miss Alcott
tells of one afternoon when Mr. Emerson and Margaret Fuller were
visiting her mother and the conversation drifted to the subject of
education. Turning to Mr. Alcott, Miss Fuller said:

"Well, Mr. Alcott, you have been able to carry out your methods in
your own family; I should like to see your model children."

A few moments later, as the guests stood on the door-step, ready to
leave, there was a wild uproar heard in the near distance and round
the corner of the house came a wheel-barrow holding baby May, dressed
as a queen; Miss Alcott says: "I was the horse, bitted and bridled,
and driven by my sister Anna, while Lizzie played dog and barked as
loud as her gentle voice permitted.

"All were shouting and wild with fun, which, however, came to a sudden
end, for my foot tripped and down we all went in a laughing heap,
while my mother put a climax to the joke by saying with a dramatic
wave of the hand:

"'Here are the model children, Miss Fuller!'"

When Mrs. Alcott's father, Colonel May, died, he left his daughter a
small property, and she now determined to buy a house in Concord with
it, so that whatever the varying fortunes of the family might be in
future they would at least have a roof over their heads. An additional
amount of five hundred dollars was added by Mr. Emerson, who was
always the good angel of the family, and the place in Concord known as
"Hillside" was bought, where life and work began in earnest for Louisa
and her sisters, for only too clearly they saw the heavy weight that
was being laid on their mother's shoulders.

Louisa was growing in body and spirit in those days, stretching up
physically and mentally, and among the sources of her finest
inspiration was the gentle reformer, philosopher and writer, Ralph
Waldo Emerson, who was ever her father's loyal friend and helper.
Louisa's warm little heart enshrined the calm, great-minded man who
always understood things, and after she had read Goethe's
correspondence with Bettine, she, like Bettine, placed her idol on a
pedestal and worshipped him in a truly romantic fashion. At night,
after she had gone to her room, she wrote him long passionate letters,
expressing her devotion, but she never sent the letters--only told him
of them in later years, when they laughed together over her girlish
fancy. Once, she confessed to having sat in a tall cherry-tree at
midnight and sung to the moon until the owls scared her to bed; and of
having sung Mignon's song under his window in very bad German, and
strewed wild flowers over his door-step in the darkness. This sounds
very sentimental and silly, but Louisa was never that. She had a deep,
intense nature, which as yet had found no outlet or expression, and
she could have had no safer hero to worship than this gentle, serene,
wise man whose friendship for her family was so practical in its
expression. Also at that period, which Louisa herself in her diary
calls the "sentimental period," she was strongly influenced by the
poet and naturalist, Thoreau. From him she learned to know Nature in a
closer and more loving intimacy. Thoreau was called a hermit, and
known as a genius, and more often than not he could be found in his
hut in the woods, or on the river bank, where he learned to look for
the bright-eyed "Alcott girl," who would swing along his side in
twenty-mile tramps, eager and inquisitive about everything, learning
new facts about flowers and trees and birds and insects from the great
man at her side. Truly a fortunate girl was Louisa, with two such
friends and teachers as the great Emerson and Thoreau. Hawthorne, too,
fascinated her in his shy reserve, and the young girl in her teens
with a tremendous ability to do and to be something worth while in
life could have had no more valuable preface to her life as a writer
than that of the happy growing days at Concord, with that group of
remarkable men.

At that time she did not think seriously of having talent for writing,
as she had only written a half-dozen pieces of verse, among them one
called "My Kingdom," which has been preserved as a bit of girlish
yearning for the best in religion and in character, sweetly expressed,
and some thrilling melodramas for the "troupe" in the barn to act.
These were overflowing with villains and heroes, and were lurid enough
to satisfy the most intense of her audience. Later some of them were
collected under the title of "Comic Tragedies"--but at best they only
serve to show how full of imaginative possibilities the girl's nature
was.

Although the Alcotts had their own home in Concord now, it was yet
almost impossible to make ends meet, and with the sturdy independence
which proved to be one of her marked traits, Louisa determined to earn
some money and add to the family income. It was no easy thing to do,
for there were few avenues of work open to girls in that day. But she
could teach, for it was quite a popular resource to open a small
school in some barn, with a select set of pupils. Louisa herself had
been to one of these "barn schools," and now she opened one in Mr.
Emerson's barn, but it paid very poorly, as did everything which the
Alcotts attempted to do. The brave mother was so completely
discouraged, that when one day a friend passing through Concord called
on her, Mrs. Alcott confessed the state of her financial affairs. As a
result of that confession, the family once more migrated to Boston,
leaving the Hawthornes as occupants of "Hillside." In the city Mrs.
Alcott was given a position as visitor to the poor by a benevolent
association, and she also kept an employment agency--a more
respectable occupation than it was in later years. Once more there was
money in the treasury, and with their usual happy optimism the family
cheered up and decided that life was worth living, even under the most
trying circumstances. While his wife was busy in that way, Mr. Alcott
gradually drew a circle of people around him to whom his theories of
life were acceptable, and who paid a small price to attend the
"conversations" he held on subjects which interested him to discuss.
Being appreciated, even by a small audience, was balm to the wounded
spirit of the gentle philosopher, whose "Fruitlands" experiment had
been such a bitter one, and now he was as happy as though he were
earning large amounts by his work, instead of the meager sum paid by
his disciples to hear him talk of his pet theories. But he was
contented, and his happiness was reflected by his adoring family. Mrs.
Alcott, too, was satisfied with the work she was doing, so for a time
all went well with the "Pathetic Family" as Louisa had christened
them.

Louisa, meanwhile, was learning many lessons as she traveled slowly up
the road to womanhood--learning courage and self-denial, linked with
cheerfulness from mother and father, and enjoying a wholesome
comradeship in the home life with her sisters.

Anna, the oldest daughter, was much like her father. She never worried
about her soul or her shortcomings as Louisa did; she accepted life as
it came, without question, and was of a calm nature, unlike turbulent,
questioning Louisa, who had as many moods as there were hours in a day
and who found ruling her tempestuous nature the hardest piece of work
life offered her. She confesses in her diary: "My quick tongue is
always getting me into trouble, and my moodiness makes it hard to be
cheerful when I think how poor we are, how much worry it is to live,
and how many things I long to do--I never can. So every day is a
battle, and I'm so tired I don't want to live, only it's cowardly to
die till you have done something." Having made this confession to an
unresponsive page of her journal, the restless nature gave up the
desire to be a coward, and turned to achieving whatever work might
come to her hand to do, little dreaming what was before her in the
coming years. She was very fine looking, of which she evidently was
conscious, for she says in her diary:

"If I look in my glass I try to keep down vanity about my long hair,
my well-shaped head, and my good nose." Besides these good points of
which she speaks so frankly, she was tall and graceful, with a heavy
mass of glossy, chestnut-brown hair. Her complexion was clear and full
of color, and her dark-blue eyes were deep-set and very expressive.

During those years in Boston, the Alcotts spent two summers in an
uncle's roomy house, where they enjoyed such comforts as had not
before fallen to their lot, and calm Anna, sweet retiring Beth, or
Betty, as she was called, and artistic May, the youngest of the flock,
revelled in having rooms of their own, and plenty of space for their
own belongings. May was a pretty, golden-haired, blue-eyed child with
decided tastes, and an ability to get what she most wanted in life
without much effort--an ability which poor Louisa entirely lacked, for
her success always came as the result of exhausting work.

Louisa was now seventeen years old, and Anna nineteen. At that time
came the small-pox siege, and after Anna had recovered partially she
was obliged to take a rest, leaving her small school in Louisa's
charge. There were twenty scholars, and it was a great responsibility
for the girl of seventeen, but she took up the work with such
enthusiasm that she managed to captivate her pupils, whose attention
she held by illustrating many of their lessons with original stories,
telling them in a way they would never forget. When Anna came back the
school was so flourishing that Louisa continued to help with the
teaching, and it seemed probable that she had found her greatest
talent, although little did she guess how many interesting avenues of
experience were to widen before her wondering eyes before she was to
settle down to her life-work.

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