Miss Alcott feared she could not do it, and set herself to write Little Women, to show the publishers that she could not write a story for girls.  But she did not succeed in convincing them or the world of her inability.  In two months the first part was finished, and published October, 1868.  It was a natural, graphic story of her three sisters and herself in that simple Concord home.  How we, who are grown-up children, read with interest about the “Lawrence boy,” especially if we had boys of our own, and sympathized with the little girl who wrote Miss Alcott, “I have cried quarts over Beth’s sickness.  If you don’t have her marry Laurie in the second part, I shall never forgive you, and none of the girls in our school will ever read any more of your books.  Do! do! have her, please.”

The second part appeared in April, 1869, and Miss Alcott found herself famous.  The “pile of blotted manuscript” had “placed the name of March upon the roll of fame.”  Some of us could not be reconciled to dear Jo’s marriage with the German professor, and their school at Plumfield, when Laurie loved her so tenderly.  “We cried over Beth, and felt how strangely like most young housekeepers was Meg.  How the tired teacher, and tender-hearted nurse for the soldiers must have rejoiced at her success!  “This year,” she wrote her publishers, “after toiling so many years along the uphill road, always a hard one to women writers, it is peculiarly grateful to me to find the way growing easier at last, with pleasant little surprises blossoming on either side, and the rough places made smooth.”

When Little Men was announced, fifty thousand copies were ordered in advance of its publication!  About this time Miss Alcott visited Rome with her artist sister May, the “Amy” of Little Women, and on her return, wrote Shawl-straps, a bright sketch of their journey, followed by an Old-Fashioned Girl; that charming book Under the Lilacs, where your heart goes out to Ben and his dog Sancho; six volumes of Aunt Jo’s Scrap-bag; Jack and Jill; and others.  From these books Miss Alcott has already received about one hundred thousand dollars.

She has ever been the most devoted of daughters.  Till the mother went out of life, in 1877, she provided for her every want.  May, the gifted youngest sister, who was married in Paris in 1878 to Ernst Nieriker, died a year and a half later, leaving her infant daughter, Louisa May Nieriker, to Miss Alcott’s loving care.  The father, who became paralyzed in 1882, now eighty-six years old, has had her constant ministries.  How proud he has been of his Louisa!  I heard him say, years ago, “I am riding in her golden chariot.”

Miss Alcott now divides her time between Boston and Concord.  “The Orchards,” the Alcott home for twenty-five years, set in its frame of grand trees, its walls and doors daintily covered with May Alcott’s sketches, has become the home of the “Summer School of Philosophy,” and Miss Alcott and her father live in the house where Thoreau died.