iends in Boston, preached and practised a
vegetarian gospel,--rice without sugar and graham meal without butter
or molasses,--monotonous but wholesome, spent their summers with
friends at Scituate and, in town or country, partly owing to the
principles of the new education, partly to the preoccupation of the
parents, the children of the family were left in large measure to the
teaching of nature and their own experience.

Very abundant moral instruction there was in this apostolic family,
both by example and precept, but the young disciples were expected to
make their own application of the principles. The result, in the case
of Louisa, was to develop a girl of very enterprising and adventurous
character, who might have been mistaken for a boy from her sun-burned
face, vigorous health, and abounding animal spirits. It was her pride
to drive her hoop around the Common before breakfast and she tells us
that she admitted to her social circle no girl who could not climb a
tree and no boy whom she had not beaten in a race. Her autobiography
of this period, she has given us, very thinly disguised, in "Poppy's
Pranks."

Meanwhile, her mental faculties were not neglected. Mr. Alcott began
the education of his children, in a kindergarten way, almost in their
infancy, and before his Boston school closed, Louisa had two or three
years in it as a pupil. What his method of education could do with a
child of eight years is shown by a poem written by Louisa at that age.
The family were then living in Concord, in the house which, in "Little
Women," is celebrated as "Meg's first home." One early Spring day,
Louisa found in the garden a robin, chilled and famished, and wrote
these lines:

"Welcome, welcome, little stranger,
Fear no harm, and fear no danger;
We are glad to see you here,
For you sing, Sweet Spring is near.

Now the white snow melts away;
Now the flowers blossom gay:
Come, dear bird, and build your nest,
For we love our robin best."

It will be remembered that this literary faculty, unusual at the age
of eight, had been attained by a girl in the physical condition of an
athlete, who could climb a tree like a squirrel.

Readers of "Little Women" will remember what a child's paradise "Meg's
first home" was, with its garden full of fruit-trees and shade, and
its old empty barn which the children alternately turned into a
drawing-room for company, a gymnasium for romps, and a theatre fo