ty and
Tommy! In the moment of blissful reunion tears and smiles intermingled
and all the bitterness and losses and sorrows of the cruel journey
were washed away, leaving only a tender memory of those noble souls
who had fared forth, not to the land of their dreams, but to a far
country whose maker and builder is God.

"And for us, it was spring in California!"

LOUISA M. ALCOTT: AUTHOR OF "LITTLE WOMEN"

In a pleasant, shady garden in Concord, Massachusetts, under a gnarled
old apple-tree, sat a very studious looking little person, bending
over a sheet of paper on which she was writing. She had made a seat
out of a tree stump, and a table by laying a board across two
carpenter's horses, whose owner was working in the house, and no
scholar writing a treatise on some deep subject could have been more
absorbed in his work than was the little girl in the garden.

For a whole long hour she wrote, frequently stopping to look off into
the distance and bite the end of her pencil with a very learned look,
then she would bend over her paper again and write hard and fast.
Finally, she laid down her pencil with an air of triumph, jumped up
from the stump and rushed toward the house.

"Mother! Anna! I've written a poem about the robin we found this
morning in the garden!" Dashing into the library she waved the paper
in the air with a still more excited cry: "Listen!" and dropped on the
floor to read her poem to a much thrilled audience of two. With great
dramatic effect she read her lines, glancing up from time to time to
see that she was producing the proper effect. This is what she read:

TO THE FIRST ROBIN

Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
Fear no harm and fear no danger,
We are glad to see you here,
For you sing "Sweet Spring is near."

Now the white snow melts away,
Now the flowers blossom gay,
Come, dear bird, and build your nest,
For we love our robin best.

She finished with an upward tilt of her voice, while her mother
excitedly flourished the stocking she was darning over her head,
crying: "Good! Splendid!" and quiet Anna echoed the words, looking
with awe at her small sister, as she added, "It's just like
Shakespeare!"

The proud mother did not say much more in praise of the budding
poetess's effort, for fear of making her conceited; but that night,
after the verses had been read to a delighted father, and the young
author had gone happily off to bed, th