he answer will come in time for me to
see it."

Two days later Miss Alcott was sent for. John stretched out both hands
as he said, "I knew you'd come. I guess I'm moving on, ma'am." Then
clasping her hand so close that the death marks remained long upon
it, he slept the final sleep. An hour later John's letter came,
and putting it in his hand, Miss Alcott kissed the dead brow of the
Virginia blacksmith, for his aged mother's sake, and buried him in the
government lot.

The noble teacher after a while became ill from overwork, and was
obliged to return home, soon writing her book, _Hospital Sketches_,
published in 1865. This year, needing rest and change, she went to
Europe as companion to an invalid lady, spending a year in Germany,
Switzerland, Paris, and London. In the latter city she met Jean
Ingelow, Frances Power Cobbe, John Stuart Mill, George Lewes, and
others, who had known of the brilliant Concord coterie. Such persons
did not ask if Miss Alcott were rich, nor did they care.

In 1868 her father took several of her more recent stories to Roberts
Brothers to see about their publication in book form. Mr. Thomas
Niles, a member of the firm, a man of refinement and good judgment,
said: "We do not care just now for volumes of collected stories. Will
not your daughter write us a new book consisting of a single story for
girls?"

Miss Alcott feared she could not do it, and set herself to write
_Little Women_, to show the publishers that she could _not_ write a
story for girls. But she did not succeed in convincing them or the
world of her inability. In two months the first part was finished, and
published October, 1868. It was a natural, graphic story of her three
sisters and herself in that simple Concord home. How we, who are
grown-up children, read with interest about the "Lawrence boy,"
especially if we had boys of our own, and sympathized with the little
girl who wrote Miss Alcott, "I have cried quarts over Beth's sickness.
If you don't have her marry Laurie in the second part, I shall never
forgive you, and none of the girls in our school will ever read any
more of your books. Do! do! have her, please."

The second part appeared in April, 1869, and Miss Alcott found herself
famous. The "pile of blotted manuscript" had "placed the name of March
upon the roll of fame." Some of us could not be reconciled to
dear Jo's marriage with the German professor, and their school at
Plumfield, when Laurie loved her so t