rience. "Christie's adventures,"
she says, "are many of them my own: Mr. Power is Mr. Parker: Mrs.
Wilkins is imaginary, and all the rest. This was begun at eighteen,
and never finished till H. W. Beecher wrote me for a serial for the
_Christian Union_ and paid $3,000 for it." It is one of the most
deservedly popular of her books.

In 1877, for Roberts Brothers' "No Name Series," Miss Alcott wrote "A
Modern Mephistopheles," her least agreeable book, but original,
imaginative, and powerful. The moral of the story is that, in our
modern life, the devil does not appear with a cloven foot, but as a
cultivated man of the world. Miss Alcott's Mephistopheles is even
capable of generous impulses. With the kindness of a Good Samaritan,
he saves a poor wretch from suicide and then destroys him morally. The
devil is apparently a mixed character with a decided preponderance of
sinfulness.

Miss Alcott had now reached her forty-fifth year, had placed her
family in independent circumstances, thus achieving her early
ambition, and the effort began to tell upon her health. A succession
of rapid changes soon came upon her. Mrs. Alcott, having attained her
seventy-seventh year, was very comfortable for her age. "Mother is
cosy with her sewing, letters, and the success of her 'girls,'" writes
Miss Alcott in January; but in June, "Marmee grows more and more
feeble," and in November the end came. "She fell asleep in my arms,"
writes Louisa; "My duty is done, and now I shall be glad to follow
her."

May, the talented artist sister, whom Louisa had educated, had once
taken to Europe and twice sent abroad for study, was married in London
in 1878, to a Swiss gentleman of good family and some fortune, Mr.
Nieriker. The marriage was a very happy one but the joy of the young
wife was brief. She died the year following, leaving an infant
daughter as a legacy to Louisa.

Mr. Emerson's death in 1882, was, to her, much like taking a member of
her own family: "The nearest and dearest friend father ever had and
the man who helped me most by his life, his books, his society. I can
never tell all he has been to me,--from the time I sang Mignon's song
under his window (a little girl) and wrote letters _a la Bettine_ to
him, my Goethe, at fifteen, up through my hard years, when his essays
on Self-Reliance, Character, Compensation, Love, and Friendship helped
me to understand myself and life, and God and Nature."

Mr. Alcott is still with her, vigorou