Mrs. Alcott received from her
father's estate. With this and a loan of $500 from Mr. Emerson, she
bought "The Hillside" in Concord, an estate which, after the Alcotts,
was occupied by Mr. Hawthorne. Thither Mrs. Alcott removed with her
family in 1846, and the two years that followed is the period which
Louisa looked back upon as the happiest of her life, "for we had," she
says, "charming playmates in the little Emersons, Channings,
Hawthornes, and Goodwins, with the illustrious parents and their
friends to enjoy our pranks and share our excursions." Here the happy
girlish life was passed which is so charmingly depicted in "Little
Women," and here at the age of sixteen, Louisa wrote, for the
entertainment of the little Alcotts and Emersons, a series of pretty
fairy tales, still to be read in the second volume of Lulu's Library.

Much as there was to enjoy in these surroundings, the problem of
subsistence had not been solved and, with the growth of her daughters
toward womanhood, it became more difficult for Mrs. Alcott. The world
had, apparently, no use for Mr. Alcott; there were six persons to be
fed and clothed, and no bread-winner in the family. The story is that
one day, a friend found her in tears and demanded an explanation.
"Abby Alcott, what does this mean?" asked the visitor, and when Mrs.
Alcott had made her confessions, her friend said, "Come to Boston and
I will find you employment."

Accepting the proposition, the family removed to Boston in 1848, and
Mrs. Alcott became the agent of certain benevolent societies. Mr.
Alcott taught private classes, or held "conversations"; the older
daughters, Anna and Louisa, found employment; and we may think of the
family as fairly comfortable during the seven or eight years of its
life in Boston. "Our poor little home," says Miss Alcott, "had much
love and happiness in it, and was a shelter for lost girls, abused
wives, friendless children, and weak and wicked men. Father and mother
had no money to give but they gave time, sympathy, help; and if
blessings would make them rich, they would be millionaires." Fugitive
slaves were among the homeless who found shelter, one of whom Mrs.
Alcott concealed in an unused brick oven.

In Miss Alcott's journal of this period, we find the burden of
existence weighing very heavily upon her, a state of mind apparently
induced by her first experience in teaching. "School is hard work,"
she says, "and I feel as though I should like to ru