At sunset they visited Sleepy Hollow, the resting place of the Alcotts, with Emerson, Thoreau, and Hawthorne close by—a goodly company, neighbors still as they were for so many years when they made Concord America's literary shrine.
Evening came, and the two pilgrims read together the Alcott journals and letters. The ink was faded, the quaint, old-fashioned writing was hard to decipher, but, beginning with a letter to Louisa written by Bronson Alcott when his daughter was seven years old, they read on until the dawn.
Only one result could be expected from such an experience. They asked permission to publish the letters and such portions of the journals as would most completely reveal the rare spiritual companionship existing between the Alcott parents and children. And, asking, they were refused, because of a feeling that the letters and journals were intimate family records, to be read, not by the many, but by the few. This same sentiment withheld the dramatization of "Little Women" for many years.
"You forget," they argued, holding fast to the dimly written pages, "that Bronson Alcott and Louisa Alcott are a part of America's literary heritage. They belong to the nation, to the world, not alone to you."
This course of reasoning finally prevailed, but not without many months of waiting. And thus, with the consent of the Alcott heirs, the book of "Little Women Letters from the House of Alcott" came to be.
CHAPTER II
I
The Alcott Boy
ONCE upon a time in the little town of Wolcott, Connecticut, was born a boy destined to offer to the world new and beautiful thoughts. He was laughed at and misunderstood; but the thoughts were truth, and they have lived, although the boy grew weary and old and passed on.