In her “Journal,” Louisa Alcott wrote, “Thursday, 27th.  Mr. Emerson died at nine P.M. suddenly.  Our best and greatest American gone.  The nearest and dearest friend father ever had, and the man who has helped me most by his life, his books, his society.  I can never tell all he has been to me,—­from the time I sang Mignon’s song under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters _... la_ Bettine to him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature.  Illustrious and beloved friend, good-by!

“Sunday, 30th.—­Emerson’s funeral.  I made a yellow lyre of jonquils for the church, and helped trim it up.  Private service at the house, and a great crowd at the church.  Father read his sonnet, and Judge Hoar and others spoke.  Now he lies in Sleepy Hollow among his brothers under the pines he loved.”

On March 4, 1888, Bronson Alcott died, and two days later Louisa Alcott followed her father.  They lie near together on the ridge a little beyond Hawthorne.  Initials only mark the graves of her sisters, but it has been found necessary to place a small stone bearing the name “Louisa” on the grave of the author of “Little Women.”  She had made every arrangement for her death, and by her own wish her funeral was in her father’s rooms in Boston, and attended by only a few of her family and nearest friends.

“They read her exquisite poem to her mother, her father’s noble tribute to her, and spoke of the earnestness and truth of her life.  She was remembered as she would have wished to be.  Her body was carried to Concord and placed in the beautiful cemetery of Sleepy Hollow, where her dearest ones were already laid to rest.  ‘Her boys’ went beside her as ‘a guard of honor,’ and stood around as she was placed across the feet of father, mother, and sister, that she might ‘take care of them as she had done all her life.’”

Louisa Alcott’s last written words were the acknowledgment of the receipt of a flower.  “It stands beside me on Marmee’s (her mother) work-table, and reminds me tenderly of her favorite flowers; and among those used at her funeral was a spray of this, which lasted for two weeks afterwards, opening bud by bud in the glass on her table, where lay the dear old ‘Jos.  May’ hymn-book, and her diary with the pen shut in as she left it when she last wrote there, three days before the end, ’The twilight is closing about me, and I am going to rest in the arms of my children.’  So, you see, I love the delicate flower and enjoy it very much.”

Reverently, with bowed heads, we stood on that pine-covered ridge which contained the mortal remains of so many who are great and illustrious in the annals of American literature.  A scant patch of earth hides their dust, but their fancies, their imaginings, their philosophy spanned human conduct, emotions, beliefs, and aspirations from the cradle to the grave.