s for his years. In 1879, at the
age of eighty, he inaugurated the Concord School of Philosophy, "with
thirty students. Father the dean. He has his dream realized at last,
and is in glory, with plenty of talk to swim in." The school was, for
Miss Alcott, an expensive toy with which she was glad to be able to
indulge her father. Personally she cared little for it. On one of her
rare visits to it, she was asked her definition of a philosopher, and
responded instantly: "My definition is of a man up in a balloon, with
his family and friends holding the ropes which confine him to earth
and trying to haul him down." For her father's sake, she rejoiced in
the success of the enterprise. Of the second season, she writes, "The
new craze flourishes. The first year, Concord people stood aloof; now
the school is pronounced a success, because it brings money to the
town. Father asked why we never went, and Anna showed him a long list
of four hundred names of callers, and he said no more."

In addition to the labors which the school laid upon Mr. Alcott, he
prepared for the press a volume of sonnets, some of which are
excellent, especially one to Louisa:

"Ne'er from thyself by Fame's loud trump beguiled,
Sounding in this and the farther hemisphere,--
I press thee to my heart as Duty's faithful child."

Mr. Alcott seemed to be renewing his youth but, in November, he was
prostrated by paralysis. "Forty sonnets last winter," writes Louisa,
"and fifty lectures at the school last summer, were too much for a man
of eighty-three." He recovered sufficiently to enjoy his friends and
his books and lingered six years, every want supplied by his devoted
daughter.

With Miss Alcott the years go on at a slower pace, the writing of
books alternating with sleepless nights and attacks of vertigo. "Jo's
Boys" was written in 1884, fifty thousand copies being printed for the
first edition. In 1886, her physician forbids her beginning anything
that will need much thought. Life was closing in upon her, and she did
not wish to live if she could not be of use. In March, 1888, Mr.
Alcott failed rapidly, and died on the sixth of the month. Miss Alcott
visited him and, in the excitement of leave-taking, neglected to wrap
herself properly, took a fatal cold, and two days after, on the day of
his burial, she followed him, in the fifty-sixth year of her age. Dr.
C. A. Bartol, who had just buried her father, said tenderly at her
funeral: "The two