Surely no one ever had a better opportunity to probe to the heart of the real emotions that make up the most prosaic as well as the most heroic daily lives than a member of that generous, happy, loving Alcott family.
And still Louisa kept on doing other things besides the writing, which was such a safety valve for her intense nature. For a short time she worked for a relative in the country, and she also taught and sewed and did housework, and made herself useful wherever her strong hands and willing heart could find some way of earning a dollar.
The seven years spent in Boston had developed her into a capable young woman of twenty-two, who was ready and eager to play her part in the great drama of life of which she was an interested spectator as she saw it constantly enacted around her.
Even then, before she had stepped across the threshold of her career, she unconsciously realized that the home stage is the real background of the supreme world drama, and she shows this by the intimate, tender domestic scenes which made all of her stories bits of real life, with a strong appeal to those whose homes are joyous parts of the present, or sacred memories.
When she was determined to achieve an end, Louisa Alcott generally succeeded, even in the face of obstacles; and now having decided to take on her own broad shoulders some of the burdens which were weighing heavily on her beloved mother, she turned to the talent which had recently yielded her the magnificent sum of five dollars. In the days at Concord she had told many stories about fairies and flowers to the little Emerson children and their friends, who eagerly drank in all the mystic tales in which wood-nymphs, water sprites, giants and fairy queens played a prominent part, and the stories were thrilling, because their teller believed absolutely in the fairy creatures she pictured in a lovely setting of woodland glades and forest dells. These stones, which she had written down and called "Flower Fables," she found among her papers, and as she read them again she felt that they might interest other children as they had those to whom they were told. She had no money to publish them, however, and no publisher would bear the expense of a venture by an untried writer. But it took more than that to daunt Louisa when her mind was made up. With great enthusiasm she told a friend of the family, Miss Wealthy Stevens, of her desire, and she generously offered to pay for publication, but it was decided not to tell the family until the book should come out. Then in radiant secrecy Louisa burned the midnight oil and prepared the little book for the press. One can fancy the proud surprise of Mrs. Alcott when, on the following Christmas morning, among her pile of gifts she found the little volume with this note:
December 25, 1854.
Dear Mother:
Into your Christmas stocking I have put my first-born, knowing that you will accept it with all its faults (for grandmothers are always kind) and look upon it merely as an earnest of what I may yet do; for with so much to cheer me on, I hope to pass in time from fairies and fables to men and realities. Whatever beauty or poetry is to be found in my little book is owing to your interest in, and encouragement of, my efforts from the first to the last, and if ever I do anything to be proud of, my greatest happiness will be that I can thank you for that, as I may do for all the good there is in me, and I shall be content to write if it gives you pleasure.
Jo is fussing about,
My lamp is going out.
To dear mother, with many kind wishes for a Happy New Year and Merry Christmas,