triumph was that she could lay its fruits at her mother's feet, and cheer with them the last years of that brave and faithful life. Mrs. Alcott had dearly loved noble books. When her girls were young she used to read aloud to them from the best authors while they sewed; and this was a large part of their education. Her own love for books went with her all through her life, till one day in 1877, a week before her death, she laid down her favorite Johnson, too weary to go on with him, and said, quietly, "I shall read no more, but I thank my good father for the blessing the love of literature has been to me for seventy years."

The death of this faithful and loving mother was as beautiful as her life had been. Her last words to her husband were, "You are laying a very soft pillow for me to rest on." And when her failing breath made it difficult to speak, she whispered, with a lovely, loving look, "A smile is as good as a prayer," and soon, waving her hand to the picture of her absent daughter, then in Europe, she said—" Good-by, my little May, good-by!"- and so died, to use Miss Alcott's own words, in the arms of that child who owed her most, who loved her best, and had counted as her greatest success the power of making these last years a scason of happy rest to the truest and tenderest of mothers."

It is the dearest plan in Miss Alcott's scheme of future literary work to write the biography of this noble mother, who had a heart warm enough and large enough to shelter the sinful as well as the sorrowful; and who so loved the worst and weakest of her fellow-creatures that she joyed in nothing so much as in spending and being spent for them.

In March, 1878, Miss Alcott's youngest sister, May, was married, in Paris, to Ernst Nieriker; and in December, 1879, she died, leaving to Louisa's care her infant daughter, Louisa May Nieriker, who was brought home to her aunt in September, 1880, the partial consolation for so grievous a loss.

"The Orchards," for twenty-five years the home of the Alcotts, is now devoted to the "Summer School of Philoso

phy," and Miss Alcott and her father live at present in the house where Thoreau died, together with Mrs. Pratt, Miss Alcott's widowed sister, and her children. Here for some time past Miss Alcott had been absorbed in the care of her father, stricken the 22d of October, 1882, with paralysis.

I cannot forget my own last interview with this serene old man, of whom Thoreau wrote: "Great Looker! Great Expecter! to converse with him was a New England night's entertainment."

It was, I think, in February, 1882, I stood under an umbrella, in a light snow, waiting for a horse-car. Mr. Alcott came by and stopped to speak to me, with that wise yet genial smile which always seemed like a benediction. He said a few friendly sentences, and then I spoke of his book of "Sonnets and Canzonets," and asked, "How is it, Mr. Alcott, that at eighty-two you are so vigorous and strong, and with a poet's heart alive in you yet?"

"It is," he said, "because I have kept the ten commandments. Men were meant to live a hundred years at least only they have disobeyed the laws. Let us have several generations of people who live healthfully and keep the commandments, and we may have those who will be able to say, 'I think I will not stop at a hundred years. I will live on!"" "Great Expecter," indeed! It seemed to me, then, that he might probably realize his own idea of living a hundred years; and the news of his illness shocked me with surprise as well as with grief. He is a man who has walked so long in heavenly places that for him to die will be but "to pass from this room into the next."

Concerning Miss Alcott, it remains only to speak of her education and her methods of work. She was educated rather by reading than by study. She was always a great reader, never a great student. At fifteen Ralph Waldo Emerson introduced her to the works of Goethe, which have ever since been her delight. Her personal library consists of Goethe, Emerson, Shakspeare, Margaret Fuller, Miss Edgeworth, and George Sand. George Eliot she does not care

for, nor does she enjoy any of the modern poets, except Whittier; but she likes Coleridge, Keats, and, farther back, Crashaw, and godly George Herbert, and a few of their contemporaries.

She never had a study. any corner will answer to write in. She is not particular as to pens and paper, and an old atlas on her knee is all the desk she cares for. She has the wonderful power to carry a dozen plots in her head at a time, thinking them over whenever she is in the mood. Sometimes she carries a plot thus for years, and suddenly finds it all ready to be written. Often, in the dead waste and middle of the night, she lies awake and plans whole chapters, word for word, and when daylight comes has only to write them off as if she were copying. In her hardest-working days she used to write fourteen hours in the twenty-four, sitting steadily at her work, and scarcely tasting food till her daily task was done.

Very few of her stories have been written in Concord. This peaceful, pleasant place, whose fields are classic ground, utterly lacks inspiration for Miss Alcott. She calls it "this dull town"; and when she has a story to write she goes to Boston, hires a quiet room, and shuts herself up in it, and waits for an east wind of inspiration, which never fails. In a month or so the book will be done, and its author comes out, "tired, hungry, and cross," and ready to go back to Concord and vegetate for a time. When engaged in the work of composition her characters seem more real to her than actual people. They will not obey her—she merely writes of them what she seems to see and hear-and sometimes these shadows whom she has conjured almost affright her with their wilful reality. She never copies, and seldom corrects - from before these men and women, great and small, she pulls away the curtain and lets us see them as they are.

CHAPTER II.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

Susan B. Anthony's Parentage- Her Girlhood-A Rebellious Quaker Incident in Her Early Life - The Heighth of Her Ambition A "High-Seat" Quaker-Incident in Her Experience as Teacher - Advocating Temperance, Anti-Slavery, and Woman Suffrage - Her Facility and Power as an Orator-Speaking to a Deaf and Dumb AudienceIncident on a Mississippi Steamboat- Celebrating Her Fiftieth Birthday Trip to Europe Incidents of Foreign Travel Arrested for Voting The Legal Struggle that followed - Her Labors for Woman Suffrage Her Industry and Self-denial for the Cause - Personal Appearance.

"He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune; for they are impediments to great enterprises either of virtue or mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit, for the public have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men; which, both in affection and means, have married and endowed the public."

HIS bit of Baconian philosophy, as alike applicable to women, was the subject, not long since, of my conversation with a remarkably gifted young English woman. She was absorbed in many public interests, and had conscientiously resolved never to marry, lest the cares necessarily involved should make inroads upon her time and thought to the detriment of the general good. "Unless," said she, some women dedicate themselves to the public service, society is robbed of needed guardians for the special wants There should be in the secular world certain orders, corresponding in a measure to the grand

of the weak and unfortunate.

✓ sisterhoods of the Catholic Church, to the members of which, as freely as to men, all offices, civic and ecclesiastical, should be open." That this ideal will be realized may be inferred from the fact that exceptional women have, in all ages, been leaders in great projects of charity and reform, and that now many stand waiting only the sanction of their century, ready for wide altruistic labors.

The world has ever had its vestal virgins, its holy women, mothers of ideas rather than men: its Marys, as well as its Marthas, who, rather than be busy housewives, preferred to sit at the feet of divine wisdom, and ponder the mysteries of the unknown. All hail to Maria Mitchell, Harriet Hosmer, Charlotte Cushman, Alice and Phoebe Cary, Louisa Alcott, and Frances Willard! All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind!

In this galaxy of single women we shall place one other star, -to be pronounced, perhaps, by the future as of the first magnitude. If we seek out what first kindled that flame, we find but a tiny spark, a few rough words, roughly spoken: "It takes some time to get the hang of the barn,” uncouth answer to kindly inquiry of gentle Quaker host, as to the new teacher's first day's experience in his public school. The vulgar words fell not on stony grounds, but on rich virgin soil, and have borne fruit to us. Demure Quaker daughter sitting there, apparently intent upon the wholesome New England dinner, was, in truth, putting to her ardent soul a mighty question, to which her life was to give answer. The modest, conscientious girl of twenty-for Susan Anthony was twenty on the fifteenth day of the second month of that year, 1840, just a score of years younger than her century— fell to pondering. For many days Susan had been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the male teacher, whom the board of education had selected to take her school during the winter. Surely, thought she, he must be very superior; for even her teaching and discipline had now unbounded praise, and he was to receive treble her salary! And here at last is