But she did not like to teach so well as her father did, and thought that perhaps she could write stories and be paid for them, and earn more money in that way. So she began to write stories. At first nobody would pay her any money for them, but she kept patiently at work, making better and better what she wrote, until in a few years she could earn a good sum by her pen. Then the great civil war came on, and Miss Alcott, like the rest of the people, wished to do something for her country. So she went to Washington as a nurse, and for some time she took care of the poor soldiers who came into the hospital wounded or sick, and she has written a little book about these soldiers which you may have read. But soon she grew ill herself from the labor and anxiety she had in the hospital, and almost died of typhoid fever; since when she has never been the robust, healthy young lady she was before, but was more or less an invalid while writing all those cheerful and entertaining books. And yet to that illness all her success as an author might perhaps be traced. Her "Hospital Sketches," first published in a Boston newspaper, became very popular, and made her name known all over the North. Then she wrote other books, encouraged by the reception given to this, and finally, in 1868, five years after she left the hospital in Washington, she published the first volume of "Little Women." From that day to this she has been constantly gaining in the public esteem, and now perhaps no lady in all the land stands higher. Several hundred thousand volumes of her books have been sold in this country, and probably as many more in England and other European countries.
Twenty years ago, Miss Alcott returned to Concord with her family, who have ever since resided there. It was there that most of her books were written, and many of her stories take that town for their starting-point. It was in Concord that "Beth" died, and there the "Little Men" now live. Miss Alcott herself has been two or three years in Europe since 1865, and has spent several winters in Boston or New York, but her summers are usually passed in Concord, where she lives with her father and mother in a picturesque old house, under a warm hill-side, with an orchard around it and a pine-wood on the hill-top behind. Two aged trees stand in front of the house, and in the rear is the studio of Miss May Alcott ("Amy"), who has become an artist of renown, and had a painting exhibited last spring in the great exhibition of pictures at Paris. Close by is another house, under the same hill-side, where Mr. Hawthorne lived and wrote several of his famous books, and it was along the old Lexington road in front of these ancient houses that the British Grenadiers marched and retreated on the day of the battle of Concord in April, 1775. Instead of soldiers marching with their plumed hats, you might have seen there last summer great plumes of asparagus waving in the field; instead of bayonets, the poles of grape-vines in ranks upon the hill; while loads of hay, of strawberries, pears and apples went jolting along the highway between hill and meadow.
The engraving shows you how Miss Alcott looks,—only you must recollect that it does not flatter her; and if you should see her, you would like her face much better than the picture of it. She has large, dark-blue eyes, brown clustering hair, a firm but smiling mouth, a noble head, and a tall and stately presence, as becomes one who is descended from the Mays, Quincys and Sewalls, of Massachusetts, and the Alcotts and Bronsons of Connecticut. From them she has inherited the best New England traits,—courage and independence without pride, a just and compassionate spirit, strongly domestic habits, good sense, and a warm heart. In her books you perceive these qualities, do you not? and notice, too, the vigor of her fancy, the flowing humor that makes her stories now droll and now pathetic, a keen eye for character, and the most cheerful tone of mind. From the hard experiences of life she has drawn lessons of patience and love, and now with her, as the apostle says, "abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity." There have been men, and some women too, who could practice well the heavenly virtue of charity toward the world at large, and with a general atmospheric effect, but could not always bring it down to earth, and train it in the homely, crooked paths of household care. But those who have seen Miss Alcott at home know that such is not her practice. In the last summer, as for years before, the citizen or the visitor who walked the Concord streets might have seen this admired woman doing errands for her father, mother, sister, or nephews, and as attentive to the comfort of her family as if she were only their housekeeper. In the sick-room she has been their nurse, in the excursion their guide, in the evening amusements their companion and entertainer. Her good fortune has been theirs, and she has denied herself other pleasures for the satisfaction of giving comfort and pleasure to them.
"So did she travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet her heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay."
[THE BOY WHO JUMPED ON TRAINS.]
BY MARY HARTWELL.