modesty," and long after their engagement she spoke of her lover as "her friend." He was, and so he continued to be in the highest sense of the word.

So satisfying were those friendship-courtship days, that apparently both were loath to end them, for another twelvemonth passed before the announcement of their betrothal, and it was nearly three years from the date of their first meeting before their marriage in King's Chapel, Boston, where the brother who had been the means of bringing them together performed the ceremony.

As their marriage day approached, there was little festivity and none of the rush that usually precedes a modern wedding. Everything was simple, quiet, and sure.

This is Bronson Alcott's letter, asking a friend to act as best man at his wedding.

So began the Alcott pilgrimage, their fortune consisting of love and faith and brains. In these they were rich indeed, and thus closed another chapter in the life of the gentle philosopher, of whom Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "Our Alcott has only just missed being a seraph."

CHAPTER III

The Alcott Children

FOR some months after their marriage the Alcotts lived in Boston, where the young enthusiast taught a school for infants. Again his fame as a teacher traveled, and he received an offer from the Quakers of Philadelphia to start a school there, an offer so tempting that the Alcotts moved to Germantown, Pennsylvania, where Anna and Louisa were born.

Eugenics and prenatal influence were not discussed then as they are to-day, but in the Alcott family nearly a century ago they were being thought and lived. Bronson Alcott and his wife considered children an expression, not of themselves, but of divinity, and as such to be accepted as a trust, rather than as a gratification of their own human longing for fatherhood and motherhood. They felt it their parental privilege rather than their duty to aid the human development of the child and thus further the fulfillment of its destiny. Each little soul was humbly asked for and reverently prepared for. From the moment they knew their prayer had been granted, the individuality and rights of that soul were respected. It was considered as a little guest that must be made happy and comfortable, carefully cherished, mentally and physically, while its fleshly garment was being prepared and the little personality made ready for its earthly appearance. How careful they were of every thought and influence, for to both parents this period was the most sacred and wonderful in their lives and in the lives of their children.

The depth of his joy and the simplicity of his faith are exquisitely expressed in the lines which Bronson Alcott wrote before the birth of his first child, Anna:

To An Expectant Mother

Louisa, the second child, born on her father's birthday, was the most intellectual and the most resourceful of the Alcott children, reflecting in her own buoyant personality the happy conditions existing before and at the time of her birth, when her father had attained his greatest material prosperity and was also realizing his mental ambitions in his little school, and her mother was temporarily relieved from the cares that so often weighed heavily upon her.

Shortly before the birth of Elizabeth the father makes this entry in his journal:

The birth of Elizabeth is followed by this entry in his journal:

One of the most trying of the Alcott family's experiences came after the birth of Elizabeth, when Bronson Alcott, again in Boston, aroused a storm of protest with his radical teachings and his advanced interpretations of the Bible. Shocked that the city where he expected to find sympathy and encouragement should have repudiated him, his school disrupted and abject poverty his lot, broken mentally and physically, he met with another cruel disappointment in the death of his infant son. Yet even then there was no word of bitterness, and no mention is made in his journal of the father's grief. Indirectly it is expressed in a subsequent entry announcing the birth of the fourth daughter, Abba May.

She was born under sunny skies. The storm had passed, and the Alcott family had removed to Concord, where they enjoyed many of their happiest years. A presage of May Alcott's artistic gifts, her queenly bearing, elegance, and charm, all familiar to readers of "Little Women," is found in this entry in the father's journal: