wages. At first Mrs. Alcott hesitated, as it was
bitterly cold and Abba May, the little baby sister, was very young,
but Mr. Alcott decided the matter with his usual kindly optimism.

"Give half our stock and trust in Providence; the weather will
moderate or wood will come," he declared. And the wood was lent, Mrs.
Alcott cheerily agreeing: "Well, their need is greater than ours. If
our half gives out we can go to bed and tell stories!"

A little later in the evening, while it was still snowing heavily, and
the Alcotts were about to cover their fire to keep it, a farmer who
was in the habit of supplying them with wood knocked at the door and
asked anxiously:

"Wouldn't you like me to drop my load of wood here? It would
accommodate me, and you need not hurry to pay for it. I started for
Boston with it but the snow is drifting so fast, I want to go home."

"Yes," answered Mr. Alcott, and as the man went away, he turned to his
wife and exclaimed: "Didn't I tell you that wood would come if the
weather didn't moderate?"

Again, a tramp asked Mr. Alcott to lend him five dollars. As he had
only a ten-dollar bill, the dear man at once offered that, asking to
have the change brought back as soon as possible. Despite the
disbelief of his family in the tramp's honesty, the man did bring the
five-dollar bill soon with profuse thanks, and the gentle
philosopher's faith in human nature was not crushed.

Still another experiment in generosity proved a harder one in its
results to the Alcotts, when Mrs. Alcott allowed some poor emigrants
to rest in her garden while she treated them to a bountiful meal.
Unfortunately for their generous benefactor, in return they gave
small-pox to the entire family, and, although the girls had light
cases, Mr. and Mrs. Alcott were very sick and, as Miss Alcott records
later: "We had a curious time of exile, danger and trouble." She adds:
"No doctors and all got well."

When Louisa Alcott was almost ten years old, and Anna twelve, Mr.
Alcott took a trip to England, hoping to interest the people there in
his new theories of education and of living. So enthusiastically and
beautifully did he present his theories that he won many converts, and
one of them, a Mr. Lane, returned to America with him to help him
found a colony on the new ideas, which were more ideal than practical,
and so disapproved of by Mr. Alcott's friends, who thought him foolish
to waste time and money on them.

However, after mo