, 1888-04-20
TWO POINTS OF WARNING
SUGGESTED IN CONNECTION WITH
LOUISA M. ALcoTT'S CAREER.

1t is rare to see a woman who, If tried
by her own standa and that of those
Immediately around her, has led a nobler
or more completely satisfactory life than
Louisa Alcott. But since we ought never
to be satisfied either with ourselves or
with anybody else, and since one of the
chief uses of the study of fine character
is to discover wherein it could be yet
finer, there is always a lesson to
be drawn from the very limitations
of each career. The finest thought
ever expressed by Howells, 1 think, is
where he suggests that success itself may
perhaps seem very much like failure, seen
from the inside; and there are few emf
nent persons, probably, so sunk in conceit
that they could not afford to others GER
tain warnings as well as examples from
their own achievements. The obituaries
usually miss such warnings; indeed, they
are apt to turn expressly away from them
and think 1t a little ungenerous to draw
them, the consequences being that such
obituaries are rs valueless as an inscrip-
ton on a monument, and, like that, re-
duce all character TO a level of
place and conventional virtue. There are,
perhaps, but two points of warning, or
even of limitation, that need to I've sug-
gestcd In connection with Miss Alcott's
brilliant career, but each of these is OF
some weight.
First it is fair to ask why this valuable
life was cut off so early-at' 50 instead of
SO, this last being her fathers term of
years. Was 1t not because she burned the
candle too desperately, while his burned
calmly and at times even feebly2 OF late
years she has suffered repeatedly, it is
stated, from nervous prostration and other
disorders coming from excess of work
She never had any leisure; she was always
overworked. Grant that this evil came
largely from those eXacting demands of
admirers and correspondents which have
been more than once pointed out in these
columns, and which make it often hard
for a really useful life to prolong itself.
But | suspect there was another reason,
which seldom fails to tell upon successful
authors. The late Mr.. James r.. Fields
once told me hat he asked Charles Rcadc.
when at the height of his fame, "Why do
you give us nc more of those delightful
shorter tales like Peg Wellington and
Christie TOMBSTONE OF which your fame
was first ~founded?' because" said
Reade, simply, 81 cannot now afford it."
When he was comparatively poor and I'M
known he could write masterpieces; when
he had achieved fame and fortune, and
acquired the habits shat come with these.
he no longer had the leisure to write them
1t is the same with health, time, and life
itself. The young girl who. earns S. by
her first published story has an immense
sense of wealth; let her cherish it, for she
will probably never feel so rich again. AS
n rule, il you earn $500 n year, You spend
it.; If you earn So, 900 a year, your stand
ard of expenditures almost invariably eX-
pands to match it; and for the most part,
the more money one earns, the harder ii
is to take a vacation. This applies to-
those who spend money selfishly, but. it
upnlipG with tanfpl1 fprpa IN thpGa who
are generous.
When the writer was planning in the
autumn of 1861 to enlist a regiment for
the civil war, it occurred to him to invite
the celebrated John b. Cough to go as
chaplain, since his personal magnetism
and eloquence, although he was not a.
clergyman, would lie felt through the
whole Union army. On inquiry it turned
out hat Mr.. Cough was absolutely fet-
tered by his own large earnings and pro-
fuse charities, he could easily earn $50 or
800 n day the year round hg lecturing;
but all this large income was mOrtgaged
in advance to young men whom he was
educating and poor families whom he was
supporting, so hat he absolutely could
not afford to stop work for a moment
Had he been poorer, he could have gone
So when one reads of Miss Alcott'S coming
into the Office of The Woman's Journal,
anu bringing Cttu lnhL Sne lllu taTllttl
before breakfast, one is led to ask whether
1t would not have been better not to have
earned it thaneto give it way so lavishly
as to have 10 go to work after breakfast
for another 800, instead of taking II day
off and letting the tired brain rest. 1t is
the last lesson ever learned by writer's
aud artists to be wisely economical of
themselves, and TO spare the sources from
which prosperity and usefulness too easily
flow.
The other lesson goes deeper. Miss AL
colts intellectual work itself found ~
limitation in its grade by reason of its
ready abundance. She had the ear of her
public; she was, as was a il of her, "a
benefactor of households" and perhaps
she did-it is impossible to prove the con-
trary-the very highest work of which
she was capable. But it was not very
high or very permanent; she never
equaled her first successful work Of tic-
ton, and for the rest of her life, us in the
case of Bret Harte, she simply repeated
the same few delineations. They were, of
course, more innocent and healLhful than
Harte's, but they were as m"onotonous;
children, doubtless, continued to cry for
them, but no maturer reader-at least
none familiar with Northumberland to
keep the run of them. Her muse was do
nestle, simple and sOciable; the instinct
of art she never had. 1t is difficult to
imagine her as bordering n situation
deeply, still less as concerning herself
about phrase or diction. In this she was
curiously unlike Helen Jackson, who was
an artist by nature and by habit, and who
was able to write Ramona so rapidly
that it seemed an improvisation, because
she had learned the use of her tools be-
fore.-T. w. Higginson in Harper's Ba
Ear.