"What vices less of?"
| Idleness | Impatience | Selfishness |
| Wilfulness | Impudence | Activity |
| Vanity | Pride | Love of cats |
In this same lesson comes the twelve-year-old Louisa's explanation of the difference between faith and hope:
Faith can believe without seeing; hope is not sure, but tries to have faith when it desires.
Louisa's love of nature, her trained habits of thought, her poetic imagination, and her keen appreciation of beauty are indicated in this entry in her journal, written at Fruitlands in 1843 or 1844, when she was a child of ten or eleven:
I wrote in my imagination book, and enjoyed it very much. Life is pleasanter than it used to be, and I don't care about dying any more. Had a splendid run, and got a box of cones to burn. Sat and heard the pines sing a long time. Had good dreams, and woke now and then to think, and watch the moon. I had a pleasant time with my mind, for it was happy.
CHAPTER VIII
Girlhood and Womanhood
FAMILIAR to every reader of "Little Women" is the March family's quaint brown house with its many windows, its old-fashioned garden, its homely, homelike air, its unfailing hospitality. This home, as described by Louisa M. Alcott, is a picture of the Alcott home at Concord, the scene of the girlhood and young womanhood of the Alcott children. Many of Louisa's books were written there; "Little Women" was lived there. In Concord, Anna met John Pratt, and the first love story in "Little Women" is Anna's life romance. There little Beth passed from the material to the spiritual life, and Amy first developed the artistic talents which later caused her work to be sought for by art museums and private collectors.