(This of a baby of four.)
A spiritual and moral inventory of the progress of Anna and Louisa is set down by the father when his daughters had reached the dignified ages of six and four:
The children have improved under my training. Anna, who has been with me more of the time than Louisa, has been greatly benefited. She is happier, more capable of self control, more docile and obeys from love and faith. She has fine elements for excellence, moral and intellectual. If she does not evince a pure and exalted character, it will be our failure, not hers, in the improvement of her natural endowments.
Louisa is yet too young for the formation of just views of her character. She manifests uncommon activity and force of mind at present, and is much in advance of her sister at the same age; example has done much to call forth her nature. She is more active and practical than Anna. Anna is ideal, sentimental. Louisa is practical, energetic. The first imagines much more than she can realize; the second, by force of will and practical talent, realizes all that she conceives—but conceives less; understanding, rather than imagination—the gift of her sister—seems to be her prominent faculty. She finds no difficulty in developing ways and means to obtain her purpose; while her sister, aiming at much, imagining ideal forms of good, and shaping them out so vividly in her mind that they become actual enjoyments, fails, when she attempts to realize them in nature—she has been dwelling on the higher and more speculative relations of things.
Both represent interesting forms of character, both have wide and useful spheres of action indicated in their conformation and will doubtless if continued to us, be real blessings.
That they did prove real blessings the history of the Alcott family has shown.
A. Bronson Alcott at the Age of 53.
From the portrait by Mrs. Hildreth.
Page 54.