the same school with their
darlings. So they took away their children, one after another, until,
when Louisa Alcott was between six and seven years old, her father was
left with only five pupils, Louisa and her two sisters ("Jo," "Beth"
and "Meg"), one white boy, and the colored boy whom he would not send
away. Mr. Alcott had depended for his support on the money which his
pupils paid him, and now he became poor, and gave up his school.

There was a friend of Mr. Alcott's then living in Concord, not far from
Boston,--a man of great wisdom and goodness, who had been very sad to
see the noble Connecticut school-master so shabbily treated in
Boston,--and he invited his friend to come and live in Concord. So
Louisa went to that old country town with her father and mother when
she was eight years old, and lived with them in a little cottage, where
her father worked in the garden, or cut wood in the forest, while her
mother kept the house and did the work of the cottage, aided by her
three little girls. They were very poor, and worked hard; but they
never forgot those who needed their help, and if a poor traveler came
to the cottage door hungry, they gave him what they had, and cheered
him on his journey. By and by, when Louisa was ten years old, they went
to another country town not far off, named Harvard, where some friends
of Mr. Alcott had bought a farm, on which they were all to live
together, in a religious community, working with their hands, and not
eating the flesh of slaughtered animals, but living on vegetable food,
for this practice, they thought, made people more virtuous. Miss Alcott
has written an amusing story about this, which she calls
"Transcendental Wild Oats." When Louisa was twelve years old, and had a
third sister ("Amy"), the family returned to Concord, and for three
years occupied the house in which Mr. Hawthorne, who wrote the fine
romances, afterward lived. There Mr. Alcott planted a fair garden, and
built a summer-house near a brook for his children, where they spent
many happy hours, and where, as I have heard, Miss Alcott first began
to compose stories to amuse her sisters and other children of the
neighborhood.

When she was almost sixteen, the family returned to Boston, and there
Miss Alcott began to teach boys and girls their lessons. She had not
been at school much herself, but she had been instructed by her father
and mother. She had seen so much that was generous and good done by
them th