r's plan for an earthly
Paradise.

There is so much that is quaint to see and seemingly impossible to hear,
for there were some strange theories worked out by this group of learned
men, that a sudden outburst of surprise and amusement will break into
the recital of the tale; but in the room upstairs they are wont to grow
quiet and speak in lowered voices, for they seem to feel the pathos
there of the final disillusionment. It is the room where at the end of a
laborious day Mrs. Alcott, with tired eyes, sewed and sewed, night after
night, by the light of her one flickering lamp, and where Bronson
Alcott, deserted by his followers, lay in his bed, with his face turned
to the wall, and in his despair over the bitter failure of his most
cherished dream, called upon death to release him.

The visitors stand and look at Mrs. Alcott's lace cap on the table by
the window, and the little cuffs that fell over her busy, useful hands;
at the sewing basket, left where she might have laid it when she was too
wearied to thread another needle; at all the many personal things
belonging to them both that speak so clearly of them and seem to bring
them very near. And then they turn to read the manuscripts and letters
that hang upon the walls; for on the walls at Fruitlands hang various
original manuscripts that as yet have never been published, and among
them are three poems by Louisa Alcott--Bronson Alcott's noted daughter.
These are now put before the public for the first time, and surely they
must stir a warm response in the most indifferent heart.

Indelibly impressed upon Louisa Alcott's memory were those days at
Fruitlands, when her childish feet ran swiftly over the pastures and
through the pine grove, and where in the early mornings she sat upon a
granite boulder far up on the hill and "thought thoughts"--so her diary
tells us. She afterwards was frequently heard to say that it was in
those days at Fruitlands that the seeds of her literary talents were
sown, which were to meet with such heartfelt appreciation from the
reading public, and were to give such solace and comfort to the old age
of her gifted father and devoted mother. Her love and reverence for her
father and her pride in his attainments were very beautiful: and in
order to appreciate what it was in him that inspired this great
sentiment, not only in his daughter, but in so many leading men of that
time, the eccentricities of the man whom the world called unpractical