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cided success; An Old Fashioned Girl (1869); Little Men (1871); Work (1873); Eight Cousins (1875), and its sequel, Rose in Bloom (1877), some critics consider this story the best of all her work; Under the Lilacs (1878); Jack and Jill (1880); and Lulu's Library (1885). This was in three volumes and was written from stories which Miss Alcott used to tell her little orphaned niece, of whom she was very fond. Besides these books, she issued at different times collections of short stories, among which are the six volumes of Aunt Jo's Scrap Bag, Silver Pitchers, and Cupid and ChowChow.

All of Miss Alcott's characters are very natural. The best of them have tempers to trouble them, as well as good qualities to make them beloved by the reader. She once said when questioned regarding her methods of work: "I have no special methods, except to use the simplest language, take every day life and make it interesting, and try to have my characters alive. I take my heroines and heroes from real life, and much truer they are than any I can imagine." The characters in Little Women are found in the Alcott family and their neighbors. Jo, who was always ready for a lark with Laurie, or the other girls, is the author herself. Meg, Beth, and Amy were skillful character drawings of Miss Alcott's sisters. Other characters, we imagine, are those known in "Concord History," for here and there are traits of men and women not unknown to fame. In Little Men, the author made good use of her father's methods of teaching the young. Professor Bhaer gets many of his fine characteristics from Mr. Alcott, and the school at

Plumfield much resembled the school kept by him in Germantown.

Miss Alcott delighted to make others happy, and as a consequence she had a vast number of persons for her friends, especially among the young people. Aspiring girls all over the land wrote to her as freely as to a foster mother for advice and counsel. Only a short time before her death, when she was far from well and burdened with a multitude of cares, she wrote to one of these girls, whom she had never seen, "Write freely to me, dear girl, and if I can help you in any way be sure I will." She always recommended a study of Emerson to the young friends who sought her advice in literary progress. To a struggling young writer, who had asked her help, she wrote: "I am sending you Emerson's Essays. Read those marked. I hope they will be as helpful to you as they have been to me and many others. They will bear study and I think are what you need to feed upon now." The marked essays were those on Friendship, Love, Heroism, Self-Reliance, and Compensation.

Louisa May Alcott died in Boston, March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-six. Her aged father, who had been an invalid dependent on her care for many years, passed away just two days before at the ripe old age of eightyfive. Miss Alcott was, no doubt, a victim of overwork. She was a great advocate of work for the health, but she did not practice her teachings, and fell a prey to nervous prostration. It is said that she frequently gave from twelve to fifteen hours a day to her literary labors, besides looking after her business affairs, caring personally for her old father, and for many years mothering

her orphan niece, Lulu. Miss Alcott was buried in the old Sleepy Hollow Cemetery of Concord, Mass., not far from the grave of her distinguished friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Louise Chandler Moulton, a personal friend of Miss Alcott, says of her: "She possessed many admirable traits of character, and her books contained many incidents of her own life and experience. She was, as a rule, quiet and reserved, I think, although she would occasionally be the gayest one in the company."

SUGGESTED WRITINGS FOR READING AND STUDY.

Little Men, Little Women, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom.

QUESTIONS ON MISS ALCOTT.

1. Write a biography of Louisa May Alcott.

2. Name five of her books. Which is her most famous book?

3. Which book do you like best? Why?

4. Tell something of Miss Alcott's help to aspiring authors.

5. Name some of her distinguished friends.

6. Tell something of Miss Alcott's characters and methods of work.

7. Describe "Marmee," In what books are the following characters found:-Jo, Prof. Bhaer, Laurie, Rose, Amy, Nan, Demi, and Meg. Write a descriptive sentence regarding each.

8. Write ten sentences about Little Women.

9. Write a brief review of Rose in Bloom.

IO.

What was Miss Alcott's first book? Why did she begin to write?

H

HELEN HUNT JACKSON.

1831-1885.

"The Red Man's Friend.”

ELEN HUNT JACKSON did for the red man as Harriet Beecher Stowe did for the slave. Through her influence the government instituted many important reforms in the method of dealing with the Indians. Her greatest work, Ramona, was written in their behalf, and, as one critic says, it must have been produced under a divine inspiration.

Helen Maria Fiske was born in Amherst, Mass., Oct. 1, 1831. Her father was a professor at Amherst College, and sent his daughter to the female seminary at Ipswich, Massachusetts, to be educated. At the age of twenty-one she married Captain Edward B. Hunt of the United States Navy, and during the following eleven years they resided at various posts. Captain Hunt died, and she made a home for herself and children at Newport, R. I., but, one by one, the children, too, passed away, leaving her sad and desolate, indeed.

Helen Hunt's first literary composition was some verses written during her girlhood and published by a Boston newspaper. She offered nothing more for publication until two years after the death of her husband, when a New York paper issued a number of her verses, over the signature of "H. H.," which attracted wide and favorable attention. In 1870 these poems were collected and published under one cover entitled Verses From H. H. After the death of her children she decided to devote herself entirely to literature. The following year

Bits of Travel and Bits of Talk About Home Matters appeared. Mrs. Hunt was now broken in health and spirit and moved to California, hoping that change of scene and climate would benefit her health. In 1875 she became the wife of William S. Jackson, a merchant of Colorado Springs. Here in this picturesque little city, nestling close at the foot of Pike's Peak, she spent the remainder of her life, excepting short periods at various times, when she traveled in California, New Mexico and the Eastern States collecting material for her books.

In 1876 Mrs. Jackson issued Sonnets and Lyrics and Mercy Philbrook's Choice. Books and stories now followed each other in quick succession. She had rapidly gained distinction in both prose and verse, and both were characterized by deep thoughtfulness, rare grace, and charmingly correct and beautiful diction. She was not unmindful of the young in her productions and gave to youthful readers several interesting books. In 1881 A Century of Dishonor appeared and was quickly conceded by critics to be the best work which she had given to the public; but three years later it gave place to Ramona. This was the author's last book, and by far her most powerful work both as a novel and in its beneficent influence. It was her most conscientious and sympathetic work, being the result of years of careful study of the Indian problem.

Mrs. Jackson met with a painful accident in June, 1884, having the misfortune to badly fracture one of her limbs. As soon as she was able to travel she was taken to California with the hope that she would recover more rapidly. Here she contracted malarial fever, and at the same time developed cancer. She died August 12, 1885. In

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