THE FRIEND OF LITTLE WOMEN AND OF LITTLE MEN.
BY F.B.S.
Would the readers of ST. NICHOLAS, who are all admirers of Miss Louisa Alcott, like to hear more than they now know about this kind friend of theirs, who has been giving them so much pleasure by her stories, and never writes so well as when she writes for boys and girls? Then, let me tell you something about her own family and childhood, and how she became the well-known writer that she is. She not only tells you pleasant stories about "little women" and "old-fashioned girls," "eight cousins," and children "under the lilacs,"—but she shows you how good it is to be generous and kind, to love others and not to be always caring and working for yourselves. And the way she can do this is by first being noble and unselfish herself. "Look into thine own heart and write," said a wise man to one who had asked how to make a book. And it is because Miss Alcott looks into her own heart and finds such kindly and beautiful wishes there that she has been able to write so many beautiful books. They tell the story of her life; but they tell many other stories also. So let me give you a few events and scenes in her life, by themselves.
Miss Alcott's father was the son of a farmer in Connecticut, and her mother was the daughter of a merchant in Boston. After growing up in a pretty, rural town, among hardy people who worked all day in the fields or the woods, and were not very rich, Mr. Alcott went down into Virginia and wandered about among the rich planters and the poor slaves who then lived there; selling the gentlemen and ladies such fine things as they would buy from his boxes,—for he was a traveling merchant, or peddler,—staying in their mansions sometimes, and sometimes in the cabins of the poor; reading all the books he could find in the great houses, and learning all that he could in other ways. Then, he went back to Connecticut and became a school-master. So fond was he of children, and so well did he understand them, that his school soon became large and famous, and he was sent for to go and teach poor children in Boston. Miss May, the mother of Miss Alcott, was then a young lady in that city. She, too, was full of kind thoughts for children, the poor and the rich, and when she saw how well the young school-master understood his work, how much good he was seeking to do, and how well he loved her, why, Miss May consented to marry Mr. Alcott, and then they went away to Philadelphia together, where Mr. Alcott taught another school.
Close by Philadelphia, and now a part of that great city, is Germantown, a quiet and lovely village then, which had been settled many years before by Germans, for whom it was named, and by Quakers, such as came to Philadelphia with William Penn. Here Louisa May Alcott was born, and she spent the first two years of her life in Germantown and Philadelphia. Then, her father and mother went back to Boston, where Mr. Alcott taught a celebrated school in a fine large building called the Temple, close by Boston Common, and about this school an interesting book has been written, which, perhaps, you will some day read. The little Louisa did not go to it at first, because she was not old enough, but her father and mother taught her at home the same beautiful things which the older children learned in the Temple school. By and by people began to complain that Mr. Alcott was too gentle with his scholars, that he read to them from the New Testament too much, and talked with them about Jesus, when he should have been making them say their multiplication-table. So his school became unpopular, and all the more so because he would not refuse to teach a poor colored boy who wanted to be his pupil. The fathers and mothers of the white children were not willing to have a colored child in the same school with their darlings. So they took away their children, one after another, until, when Louisa Alcott was between six and seven years old, her father was left with only five pupils, Louisa and her two sisters ("Jo," "Beth" and "Meg"), one white boy, and the colored boy whom he would not send away. Mr. Alcott had depended for his support on the money which his pupils paid him, and now he became poor, and gave up his school.
There was a friend of Mr. Alcott's then living in Concord, not far from Boston,—a man of great wisdom and goodness, who had been very sad to see the noble Connecticut school-master so shabbily treated in Boston,—and he invited his friend to come and live in Concord. So Louisa went to that old country town with her father and mother when she was eight years old, and lived with them in a little cottage, where her father worked in the garden, or cut wood in the forest, while her mother kept the house and did the work of the cottage, aided by her three little girls. They were very poor, and worked hard; but they never forgot those who needed their help, and if a poor traveler came to the cottage door hungry, they gave him what they had, and cheered him on his journey. By and by, when Louisa was ten years old, they went to another country town not far off, named Harvard, where some friends of Mr. Alcott had bought a farm, on which they were all to live together, in a religious community, working with their hands, and not eating the flesh of slaughtered animals, but living on vegetable food, for this practice, they thought, made people more virtuous. Miss Alcott has written an amusing story about this, which she calls "Transcendental Wild Oats." When Louisa was twelve years old, and had a third sister ("Amy"), the family returned to Concord, and for three years occupied the house in which Mr. Hawthorne, who wrote the fine romances, afterward lived. There Mr. Alcott planted a fair garden, and built a summer-house near a brook for his children, where they spent many happy hours, and where, as I have heard, Miss Alcott first began to compose stories to amuse her sisters and other children of the neighborhood.
When she was almost sixteen, the family returned to Boston, and there Miss Alcott began to teach boys and girls their lessons. She had not been at school much herself, but she had been instructed by her father and mother. She had seen so much that was generous and good done by them that she had learned it is far better to have a kind heart and to do unselfish acts than to have riches or learning or fine clothes. So, mothers were glad to send her their children to be taught, and she earned money in this way for her own support.
But she did not like to teach so well as her father did, and thought that perhaps she could write stories and be paid for them, and earn more money in that way. So she began to write stories. At first nobody would pay her any money for them, but she kept patiently at work, making better and better what she wrote, until in a few years she could earn a good sum by her pen. Then the great civil war came on, and Miss Alcott, like the rest of the people, wished to do something for her country. So she went to Washington as a nurse, and for some time she took care of the poor soldiers who came into the hospital wounded or sick, and she has written a little book about these soldiers which you may have read. But soon she grew ill herself from the labor and anxiety she had in the hospital, and almost died of typhoid fever; since when she has never been the robust, healthy young lady she was before, but was more or less an invalid while writing all those cheerful and entertaining books. And yet to that illness all her success as an author might perhaps be traced. Her "Hospital Sketches," first published in a Boston newspaper, became very popular, and made her name known all over the North. Then she wrote other books, encouraged by the reception given to this, and finally, in 1868, five years after she left the hospital in Washington, she published the first volume of "Little Women." From that day to this she has been constantly gaining in the public esteem, and now perhaps no lady in all the land stands higher. Several hundred thousand volumes of her books have been sold in this country, and probably as many more in England and other European countries.
Twenty years ago, Miss Alcott returned to Concord with her family, who have ever since resided there. It was there that most of her books were written, and many of her stories take that town for their starting-point. It was in Concord that "Beth" died, and there the "Little Men" now live. Miss Alcott herself has been two or three years in Europe since 1865, and has spent several winters in Boston or New York, but her summers are usually passed in Concord, where she lives with her father and mother in a picturesque old house, under a warm hill-side, with an orchard around it and a pine-wood on the hill-top behind. Two aged trees stand in front of the house, and in the rear is the studio of Miss May Alcott ("Amy"), who has become an artist of renown, and had a painting exhibited last spring in the great exhibition of pictures at Paris. Close by is another house, under the same hill-side, where Mr. Hawthorne lived and wrote several of his famous books, and it was along the old Lexington road in front of these ancient houses that the British Grenadiers marched and retreated on the day of the battle of Concord in April, 1775. Instead of soldiers marching with their plumed hats, you might have seen there last summer great plumes of asparagus waving in the field; instead of bayonets, the poles of grape-vines in ranks upon the hill; while loads of hay, of strawberries, pears and apples went jolting along the highway between hill and meadow.
The engraving shows you how Miss Alcott looks,—only you must recollect that it does not flatter her; and if you should see her, you would like her face much better than the picture of it. She has large, dark-blue eyes, brown clustering hair, a firm but smiling mouth, a noble head, and a tall and stately presence, as becomes one who is descended from the Mays, Quincys and Sewalls, of Massachusetts, and the Alcotts and Bronsons of Connecticut. From them she has inherited the best New England traits,—courage and independence without pride, a just and compassionate spirit, strongly domestic habits, good sense, and a warm heart. In her books you perceive these qualities, do you not? and notice, too, the vigor of her fancy, the flowing humor that makes her stories now droll and now pathetic, a keen eye for character, and the most cheerful tone of mind. From the hard experiences of life she has drawn lessons of patience and love, and now with her, as the apostle says, "abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." There have been men, and some women too, who could practice well the heavenly virtue of charity toward the world at large, and with a general atmospheric effect, but could not always bring it down to earth, and train it in the homely, crooked paths of household care. But those who have seen Miss Alcott at home know that such is not her practice. In the last summer, as for years before, the citizen or the visitor who walked the Concord streets might have seen this admired woman doing errands for her father, mother, sister, or nephews, and as attentive to the comfort of her family as if she were only their housekeeper. In the sick-room she has been their nurse, in the excursion their guide, in the evening amusements their companion and entertainer. Her good fortune has been theirs, and she has denied herself other pleasures for the satisfaction of giving comfort and pleasure to them.
"So did she travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet her heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
[THE BOY WHO JUMPED ON TRAINS.]
BY MARY HARTWELL.
There was a boy whose name was Dunn,
And he was one
As full of fun
As any boy could walk or run!
His cheeks were plump, his eyes were bright,
He stepped as light
As a camel might,
And bounced and played from morn till night.
And whether he was here or there,
His parents' care—
Unseen like air—
Followed and held him everywhere.
"HE WOULD JUMP ON THE CARS TO RIDE."
He really was their joy and pride—
Was good beside;
But woe betide—
He would jump on the cars to ride!
There, hanging to a brake or step,
Tight hold he kept,
And onward swept,
Yelling with all his might, "Git-tep!"
Dunn's father learned that he did so,
And told him to
Decline to go
Where trains were running to and fro.
"HIS FATHER'S STERN COMMAND."
As for his mother, she turned white,
And gasped with fright
To think Dunn might
Come home a pancake some fine night!
But his relations often said,
With shaking head,
That boy was led
To have his way if it killed him dead!
And sure enough when school was out,
And boys about
The trains flocked out,
Dunn followed too, with plunge and shout.
"THE FREIGHT-CARS DECKED WITH BOYS DID SLIDE."
He did not mean to grab a ride,
But by his side,
With tempting glide,
The freight-cars decked with boys did slide!
Where was his father's stern command?
Out went his hand;
He gained a stand—
At least he planned to gain a stand!
What is it? Crash! His head is blind!
That wheel behind—
He hears it grind!
And he is paralyzed in mind!
On cork and crutches now goes Dunn!
Whole boys may run—
Grab rides for fun—
But, as I said, this boy is Dunn!
[THE TOWER-MOUNTAIN]
BY GUSTAVUS FRANKENSTEIN.