Most of her stories have been written in Boston, where she finds more inspiration than at Concord.  “She never had a study,” says Mrs. Moulton; “any corner will answer to write in.  She is not particular as to pens and paper, and an old atlas on her knee is all the desk she cares for.  She has the wonderful power to carry a dozen plots in her head at a time, thinking them over whenever she is in the mood.  Often in the dead waste and middle of the night she lies awake and plans whole chapters.  In her hardest working days she used to write fourteen hours in the twenty-four, sitting steadily at her work, and scarcely tasting food till her daily task was done.  When she has a story to write, she goes to Boston, hires a quiet room, and shuts herself up in it.  In a month or so the book will be done, and its author comes out ‘tired, hungry, and cross,’ and ready to go back to Concord and vegetate for a time.”

Miss Alcott, like Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, is an earnest advocate of woman’s suffrage, and temperance.  When Meg in Little Women prevails upon Laurie to take the pledge on her wedding-day, the delighted Jo beams her approval.  In 1883 she writes of the suffrage reform, “Every year gives me greater faith in it, greater hope of its success, a larger charity for those who cannot see its wisdom, and a more earnest wish to use what influence I possess for its advancement.”

Miss Alcott has done a noble work for her generation.  Her books have been translated into foreign languages, and expressions of affection have come to her from both east and west.  She says, “As I turn my face toward sunset, I find so much to make the down-hill journey smooth and lovely, that, like Christian, I go on my way rejoicing with a cheerful heart.”

* * * * *

Miss Alcott died March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-five, three days after the death of her distinguished father, Bronson Alcott, eighty-eight years old.  She had been ill for some months, from care and overwork.  On the Saturday morning before she died, she wrote to a friend:  “I am told that I must spend another year in this ’Saint’s Rest,’ and then I am promised twenty years of health.  I don’t want so many, and I have no idea I shall see them.  But as I don’t live for myself, I will live on for others.”

On the evening of the same day she became unconscious, and remained so till her death, on Tuesday morning.

MARY LYON.

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There are two women whose memory the girls in this country should especially revere,—­Mary Lyon and Catharine Beecher.  When it was unfashionable for women to know more than to read, write, and cipher (the “three R’s,” as reading, writing, and arithmetic were called), these two had the courage to ask that women have an education equal to men, a thing which was laughed at as impracticable and impossible.  To these two pioneers we are greatly indebted for the grand educational advantages for women to-day in America.