insufficient, but it developed their own powers of thinking. Through
the pages of their diaries in which they wrote regularly, and which
were open to their mother and father, they learned to express their
thoughts clearly on all subjects. Also they were encouraged to read
freely, while only the best books were within their reach. Louisa's
poetic and dramatic efforts were not ridiculed, but criticized as
carefully as if they had been masterpieces, so she had no fear of
expressing her deepest thoughts, but acted out her own nature freely
and fearlessly.

In fact the four daughters were happy, wholesome, hearty girls, whose
frolics and pastimes took such unique forms that people wondered
whether they were the result of Mr. Alcott's theories, and Miss Alcott
tells of one afternoon when Mr. Emerson and Margaret Fuller were
visiting her mother and the conversation drifted to the subject of
education. Turning to Mr. Alcott, Miss Fuller said:

"Well, Mr. Alcott, you have been able to carry out your methods in
your own family; I should like to see your model children."

A few moments later, as the guests stood on the door-step, ready to
leave, there was a wild uproar heard in the near distance and round
the corner of the house came a wheel-barrow holding baby May, dressed
as a queen; Miss Alcott says: "I was the horse, bitted and bridled,
and driven by my sister Anna, while Lizzie played dog and barked as
loud as her gentle voice permitted.

"All were shouting and wild with fun, which, however, came to a sudden
end, for my foot tripped and down we all went in a laughing heap,
while my mother put a climax to the joke by saying with a dramatic
wave of the hand:

"'Here are the model children, Miss Fuller!'"

When Mrs. Alcott's father, Colonel May, died, he left his daughter a
small property, and she now determined to buy a house in Concord with
it, so that whatever the varying fortunes of the family might be in
future they would at least have a roof over their heads. An additional
amount of five hundred dollars was added by Mr. Emerson, who was
always the good angel of the family, and the place in Concord known as
"Hillside" was bought, where life and work began in earnest for Louisa
and her sisters, for only too clearly they saw the heavy weight that
was being laid on their mother's shoulders.

Louisa was growing in body and spirit in those days, stretching up
physically and mentally, and among the sources of her finest