e mother said:

"I do believe she is going to be a genius, Bronson!"

Yet, despite the prediction, even an appreciative parent would have
been more than surprised had she been able to look into the future and
had seen her daughter as one of the most famous writers of books for
young people of her generation. The little girl who sat under the
apple-tree on that day in early spring and wrote the verses was no
other than Louisa May Alcott, and her tribute to the robin was to be
treasured in after years as the first evidence of its writer's talent.

Louisa, the second daughter of Amos Bronson and Abba May Alcott, was
born in Germantown, Pa., on the 29th of November, 1832, and was
fortunate in being the child of parents who not only understood the
intense, restless and emotional nature of this daughter, but were
deeply interested in developing it in such a way that her marked
traits would be valuable to her in later life. To this unfailing
sympathy of both father and mother the turbulent nature owed much of
its rich achievement, and Louisa Alcott's home surroundings and
influences had as much to do with her success as a writer as had her
talent, great as that was.

At the time of her birth her father was teaching school in
Germantown, but he was a man whose ideas were original and far in
advance of his time, and his way of teaching was not liked by the
parents of his pupils, so when Louisa was two years old and her older
sister, Anna, four, the family went to Boston, where Mr. Alcott opened
his famous school in Masonic Temple, and enjoyed teaching by his own
new methods, and when he was happy his devoted wife was equally
contented.

Louisa was too young to go to school then, except as a visitor, but
her father developed her young mind at home according to his own
theories of education, and during the remainder of the all-too short
days the active child was free to amuse herself as she chose. To play
on the Common was her great delight, for she was a born investigator,
and there she met children of all classes, who appealed to her
many-sided nature in different ways. Louisa was never a respecter of
class distinctions--it did not matter to her where people lived, or
whether their hands and faces were dirty, if some personal
characteristic attracted her to them, and from those early days she
was unconsciously studying human nature, and making ready for the work
of later years.

In her own sketch of those early days, she