at she had learned it is far better to have a kind heart and to
do unselfish acts than to have riches or learning or fine clothes. So,
mothers were glad to send her their children to be taught, and she
earned money in this way for her own support.

But she did not like to teach so well as her father did, and thought
that perhaps she could write stories and be paid for them, and earn
more money in that way. So she began to write stories. At first nobody
would pay her any money for them, but she kept patiently at work,
making better and better what she wrote, until in a few years she could
earn a good sum by her pen. Then the great civil war came on, and Miss
Alcott, like the rest of the people, wished to do something for her
country. So she went to Washington as a nurse, and for some time she
took care of the poor soldiers who came into the hospital wounded or
sick, and she has written a little book about these soldiers which you
may have read. But soon she grew ill herself from the labor and anxiety
she had in the hospital, and almost died of typhoid fever; since when
she has never been the robust, healthy young lady she was before, but
was more or less an invalid while writing all those cheerful and
entertaining books. And yet to that illness all her success as an
author might perhaps be traced. Her "Hospital Sketches," first
published in a Boston newspaper, became very popular, and made her name
known all over the North. Then she wrote other books, encouraged by the
reception given to this, and finally, in 1868, five years after she
left the hospital in Washington, she published the first volume of
"Little Women." From that day to this she has been constantly gaining
in the public esteem, and now perhaps no lady in all the land stands
higher. Several hundred thousand volumes of her books have been sold in
this country, and probably as many more in England and other European
countries.

Twenty years ago, Miss Alcott returned to Concord with her family, who
have ever since resided there. It was there that most of her books were
written, and many of her stories take that town for their
starting-point. It was in Concord that "Beth" died, and there the
"Little Men" now live. Miss Alcott herself has been two or three years
in Europe since 1865, and has spent several winters in Boston or New
York, but her summers are usually passed in Concord, where she lives
with her father and mother in a picturesque old house, under a wa