CHAPTER III
The Alcott Children
FOR some months after their marriage the Alcotts lived in Boston, where the young enthusiast taught a school for infants. Again his fame as a teacher traveled, and he received an offer from the Quakers of Philadelphia to start a school there, an offer so tempting that the Alcotts moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, where Anna and Louisa were born.
Eugenics and prenatal influence were not discussed then as they are to-day, but in the Alcott family nearly a century ago they were being thought and lived. Bronson Alcott and his wife considered children an expression, not of themselves, but of divinity, and as such to be accepted as a trust, rather than as a gratification of their own human longing for fatherhood and motherhood. They felt it their parental privilege rather than their duty to aid the human development of the child and thus further the fulfillment of its destiny. Each little soul was humbly asked for and reverently prepared for. From the moment they knew their prayer had been granted, the individuality and rights of that soul were respected. It was considered as a little guest that must be made happy and comfortable, carefully cherished, mentally and physically, while its fleshly garment was being prepared and the little personality made ready for its earthly appearance. How careful they were of every thought and influence, for to both parents this period was the most sacred and wonderful in their lives and in the lives of their children.
The depth of his joy and the simplicity of his faith are exquisitely expressed in the lines which Bronson Alcott wrote before the birth of his first child, Anna:
To An Expectant Mother
The long advancing hour draws nigh—the hour
When life's young pulse begins its mystic play,
And deep affection's dreams of Form or Joy
Shall be unveiled, a bodily presence
To thy yearning heart and fond maternal eye,
The primal Soul, a semblance of thine own,
Its high abode shall leave and dwell in day,
Thyself its forming Parent. A miracle, indeed,
Shall nature work. Thou shalt become
The bearing mother of an Infant Soul—
Its guardian spirit to its home above.
But yet erewhile the lagging moments come
That layeth the living, conscious, burden down,
Firm faith may rest in hope. Accordant toils
Shall leave no time for fear, nor doubt, nor gloom.
Love, peace, and virtue, are all born of Pain,
And He who rules o'er these is ever good.
The joyous promise is to her who trusts,
Who trusting, gains the vital boon she asks,
And meekly asking, learns to trust aright.
Louisa, the second child, born on her father's birthday, was the most intellectual and the most resourceful of the Alcott children, reflecting in her own buoyant personality the happy conditions existing before and at the time of her birth, when her father had attained his greatest material prosperity and was also realizing his mental ambitions in his little school, and her mother was temporarily relieved from the cares that so often weighed heavily upon her.
Shortly before the birth of Elizabeth the father makes this entry in his journal: