Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1912-12-19

In this day and age when women, haE-
ing won their place in the industrial and
economic life of the nation. are attacking
the political stronghold of masculine
privilege. it is fitting to note that Louisa
Alcott the inspired writer of Little
Women was a very practical suffragist
herself. Surely she had every reason to
be. Not only was she the architect of
her own fortunes. but she supported in
comfort a family of which her father.
kindly. gentle and intellectual to the point
of superintendent as he was. could not
maintain. AS she could not shoulder
musket in the war between the states.
she nursed in the military hospital at
Washington and sacrificed her health to
her duty. 1t was but fitting. therefore.
that toward the end of her life we find
her describing how she drove about and
drummed up women for my suffrage
meeting in Concord. and announcing
with lofty defiance: II for one do not
want to be numbered among idiots.
felons and minors any longer. for L am
none of them
1t is not however. OF the militant
Louisa Alcott that history will have most
to say, but rather of the woman whose
first essay in the way Of an extended work
of fiction sold by the hundreds of thou
sands and is still selling. Its initial sue
cess. too, was won in day when the
reading public was vastly smaller than
now, and the present art of handling a
new book. like a circus, had not been
invented
Born in Germantown.
The parents of Louisa Alcott. who was
born in Germantown. Pa. were people of
no ordinary mold. Her mother was of
the best New England lineage, a Sewall
by birth. connected with the Hancocks
and the Quincys Her father. Bronson
AlcOtt. was man i'm whom pure intel
1ect had swallowed up all other qualities.
He was a student. an inspired teacher.
philosopher of moods so abtruse that few
could grasp his meanings.
Poverty of sort was long with the Al
colts. but it did not crush them as like
degree of perjury would d similar family
today. At that time it was not quite .'the
thing to be rich. The idea of Tom
Lawson or a Carnegie setting up as
writer or a patron of literature would
have been Uncomfortable in the circles in
which moved Whittier. Emerson. Haw-
thorne. Claiming and Alc0tt. But if none
of their associates was rich. the AlcOtts
We're downright poor. and the philosopher
could do nothing to relieve their poverty.
y school he founded in Boston, In which
he had for assistants Miss Peabody, aft
erward Hawthorne's wife. and Margaret
Fuller. lost two-thirds of it's pupils when
he published an unortlOdoX work. Con
versations of the> Gospels" and the rest
when he took a little negro
girl into his classes. He was left with
four white pupils, of whom three were his
own daughters.
School Teacher at Age of Sixteen.
At sixteen Louisa began to col tribute
to the family income by teaching school
Her own education had been wholly -un-
systematic. entirely haphazard. and there
fore good for the career fate had in store
for her. An outdoor life had given her a
rugged constitutiOn-she used to say she
would not have playmate who could
not climb a tree. Ceaseless association
with books and with cultivated people
gave her command of language and her
mothers insstence that all of her chill
dren should keep journals taught her the
art of expression. The very first story she
wrote. at the age of sixteen. though not
sent out until she was twenty, was pub
lished. and, what is more remarkable
paid for. Il can't do much with my
hands, she wrote in her journal about
this time, 80 / will use my head as
ram to make my way through
this rough-and-tumble world She used