Your Father,
Christmas Eve,
Beach Street,
Dec. 24, 1839.
On her birthday some three months later, he continues the thought in this exquisite letter:
March 16, 1840.
My dear Daughter,
With this morning's dawn opens a new year of your Life on Earth. Nine years ago you were sent, a sweet Babe into this world, a joy and hope to your father and mother. After a while, through many smiles and some few tears, you learned to lisp the names of father and mother, and to make them feel once more how near and dear you were to their hearts whenever you named their names. Now you are a still dearer object of Love and hope to them as your love buds and blossoms under their eye. They watch this flower as it grows in the Garden of Life, and scents the air with its fragrance, and delights the eye by its colours. Soon they will look not for Beauty and fragrance alone, but for the ripening and ripe fruit. May it be the Spirit of Goodness; may its leaves never wither, its flowers never fade; its fragrance never cease; but may it flourish in perpetual youth and beauty, and be transplanted in its time, into the Garden of God, whose plants are ever green, ever fresh, and bloom alway, the amaranth of Heaven, the pride and joy of angels. Thus writes your Father to you on this your birth morn.
Monday, 16 March, 1840.
Beach Street,
Boston
For
Anna,
in the Garden of Life.
This letter and his allusion to "your life on earth" show plainly his belief in life eternal, for Bronson Alcott considered earthly existence merely a period in the evolution of the soul.
On Christmas Eve, 1840; when Anna was nearly ten, Louisa just past her eighth birthday, May, the golden-haired baby of the Alcott household, and Elizabeth the little shadow child of four, he wrote Christmas letters to his daughters, which show his appreciation of their special needs, and his respect for their individualities. The letter to Elizabeth is missing; to Anna he wrote: