rs in the twenty-four, sitting steadily at her work, and scarcely
tasting food till her daily task was done. When she has a story to
write, she goes to Boston, hires a quiet room, and shuts herself up in
it. 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."

Miss Alcott, like Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, is an earnest advocate of
woman's suffrage, and temperance. When Meg in _Little Women_ prevails
upon Laurie to take the pledge on her wedding-day, the delighted Jo
beams her approval. In 1883 she writes of the suffrage reform, "Every
year gives me greater faith in it, greater hope of its success, a
larger charity for those who cannot see its wisdom, and a more earnest
wish to use what influence I possess for its advancement."

Miss Alcott has done a noble work for her generation. Her books have
been translated into foreign languages, and expressions of affection
have come to her from both east and west. She says, "As I turn my face
toward sunset, I find so much to make the down-hill journey smooth and
lovely, that, like Christian, I go on my way rejoicing with a cheerful
heart."

* * * * *

Miss Alcott died March 6, 1888, at the age of fifty-five, three
days after the death of her distinguished father, Bronson Alcott,
eighty-eight years old. She had been ill for some months, from care
and overwork. On the Saturday morning before she died, she wrote to
a friend: "I am told that I must spend another year in this 'Saint's
Rest,' and then I am promised twenty years of health. I don't want
so many, and I have no idea I shall see them. But as I don't live for
myself, I will live on for others."

On the evening of the same day she became unconscious, and remained so
till her death, on Tuesday morning.

MARY LYON.

[Illustration]

There are two women whose memory the girls in this country should
especially revere,--Mary Lyon and Catharine Beecher. When it was
unfashionable for women to know more than to read, write, and cipher
(the "three R's," as reading, writing, and arithmetic were called),
these two had the courage to ask that women have an education equal to
men, a thing which was laughed at as impracticable and impossible. To
these two pioneers we are greatly indebted for the grand educational
advantages for women to-day in America.

Amid the mountains of Western Massachusetts