“Ah, me! my happy dream. How much I leave behind that never can be mine again,” said Abel, looking back at the lost Paradise, lying white and chill in its shroud of snow.
“Yes, dear; but how much we bring away,” answered brave-hearted Hope, glancing from husband to children.
“Poor Fruitlands! The name was as great a failure as the rest!” continued Abel, with a sigh, as a frostbitten apple fell from a leafless bough at his feet.
But the sigh changed to a smile as his wife added, in a half-tender, half-satirical tone,—
“Don’t you think Apple Slump would be a better name for it, dear?”
[After so many years Louisa Alcott very naturally forgot a few unimportant details when she wrote “Transcendental Wild Oats,” yet they are important enough to set straight. Papers lately found show the exit from Fruitlands to have taken place in January. She also speaks of stoves in the old house. This is a mistake. The old chimney was taken down by Joseph Palmer’s grandson, Mr. Alvin Holman, many years after the Fruitlands Community was broken up.]
THE END