all school in Louisa's
charge. There were twenty scholars, and it was a great responsibility
for the girl of seventeen, but she took up the work with such
enthusiasm that she managed to captivate her pupils, whose attention
she held by illustrating many of their lessons with original stories,
telling them in a way they would never forget. When Anna came back the
school was so flourishing that Louisa continued to help with the
teaching, and it seemed probable that she had found her greatest
talent, although little did she guess how many interesting avenues of
experience were to widen before her wondering eyes before she was to
settle down to her life-work.

Meanwhile she kept on helping Anna with her school, and to liven up
the daily routine of a rather dull existence she began to write
thrilling plays, which she always read to Anna, who criticized and
helped revise them with sisterly severity. The plays were acted by a
group of the girls' friends, with Anna and Louisa usually taking the
principal parts. From creating these wonderful melodramas, which
always won loud applause from an enthusiastic audience, and because of
her real ability to act, Louisa now decided that she would go on the
real stage. "Anna wants to be an actress, and so do I," she wrote in
her diary. "We could make plenty of money perhaps, and it is a very
gay life. Mother says we are too young, and must wait."

Wise mother, and firm as wise! The girls were obliged to accept her
decree, and Louisa was so depressed by it that for a time she made
every one miserable by her downcast mood. Then, fortunately, an
interested relative showed one of her plays to the manager of the
Boston Theater. He read "The Rival Prima Donnas" with kindly eyes, and
offered to stage it. Here was good luck indeed! The entire Alcott
family held as great a jubilation when they heard the news as if they
had fallen heir to a fortune, and Louisa at once forgot her ambition
to act, in her ambition to be known as a successful play-wright.

Unfortunately, there was some hitch in the arrangements, and the play
was never produced, but the manager sent Louisa a free pass to the
theater, which gave her a play-wright's pride whenever she used it,
and her enjoyment in anticipating the production had been so great
that she was able to bear the actual disappointment with real
philosophy. And by that time her mood had changed. Although she always
loved to act, and acted well, her own good sens