wn, among hardy people who worked all day in the fields
or the woods, and were not very rich, Mr. Alcott went down into
Virginia and wandered about among the rich planters and the poor slaves
who then lived there; selling the gentlemen and ladies such fine things
as they would buy from his boxes,--for he was a traveling merchant, or
peddler,--staying in their mansions sometimes, and sometimes in the
cabins of the poor; reading all the books he could find in the great
houses, and learning all that he could in other ways. Then, he went
back to Connecticut and became a school-master. So fond was he of
children, and so well did he understand them, that his school soon
became large and famous, and he was sent for to go and teach poor
children in Boston. Miss May, the mother of Miss Alcott, was then a
young lady in that city. She, too, was full of kind thoughts for
children, the poor and the rich, and when she saw how well the young
school-master understood his work, how much good he was seeking to do,
and how well he loved her, why, Miss May consented to marry Mr. Alcott,
and then they went away to Philadelphia together, where Mr. Alcott
taught another school.

Close by Philadelphia, and now a part of that great city, is
Germantown, a quiet and lovely village then, which had been settled
many years before by Germans, for whom it was named, and by Quakers,
such as came to Philadelphia with William Penn. Here Louisa May Alcott
was born, and she spent the first two years of her life in Germantown
and Philadelphia. Then, her father and mother went back to Boston,
where Mr. Alcott taught a celebrated school in a fine large building
called the Temple, close by Boston Common, and about this school an
interesting book has been written, which, perhaps, you will some day
read. The little Louisa did not go to it at first, because she was not
old enough, but her father and mother taught her at home the same
beautiful things which the older children learned in the Temple school.
By and by people began to complain that Mr. Alcott was too gentle with
his scholars, that he read to them from the New Testament too much, and
talked with them about Jesus, when he should have been making them say
their multiplication-table. So his school became unpopular, and all the
more so because he would not refuse to teach a poor colored boy who
wanted to be his pupil. The fathers and mothers of the white children
were not willing to have a colored child in