“‘Thank you, ma’am; this is right good! this is what I wanted.’

“‘Then why not ask for it before?’

“’I didn’t like to be a trouble, you seemed so busy, and I could manage to get on alone.’”

The doctors had told Miss Alcott that John must die, and she must take the message to him; but she had not the heart to do it.  One evening he asked her to write a letter for him.  “Shall it be addressed to wife or mother, John?”

“Neither, ma’am; I’ve got no wife, and will write to mother myself when I get better.  Mother’s a widow; I’m the oldest child she has, and it wouldn’t do for me to marry until Lizzy has a home of her own, and Jack’s learned his trade; for we’re not rich, and I must be father to the children and husband to the dear old woman, if I can.”

“No doubt you are both, John; yet how came you to go to war, if you felt so?”

“I went because I couldn’t help it.  I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted the right thing done, and people kept saying the men who were in earnest ought to fight.  I was in earnest, the Lord knows! but I held off as long as I could, not knowing which was my duty.  Mother saw the case, gave me her ring to keep me steady, and said ‘Go’; so I went.”

“Do you ever regret that you came, when you lie here suffering so much?”

“Never, ma’am; I haven’t helped a great deal, but I’ve shown I was willing to give my life, and perhaps I’ve got to....  This is my first battle; do they think it’s going to be my last?”

“I’m afraid they do, John.”

He seemed startled at first, but desired Miss Alcott to write the letter to Jack, because he could best tell the sad news to the mother.  With a sigh, John said, “I hope the answer will come in time for me to see it.”

Two days later Miss Alcott was sent for.  John stretched out both hands as he said, “I knew you’d come.  I guess I’m moving on, ma’am.”  Then clasping her hand so close that the death marks remained long upon it, he slept the final sleep.  An hour later John’s letter came, and putting it in his hand, Miss Alcott kissed the dead brow of the Virginia blacksmith, for his aged mother’s sake, and buried him in the government lot.

The noble teacher after a while became ill from overwork, and was obliged to return home, soon writing her book, Hospital Sketches, published in 1865.  This year, needing rest and change, she went to Europe as companion to an invalid lady, spending a year in Germany, Switzerland, Paris, and London.  In the latter city she met Jean Ingelow, Frances Power Cobbe, John Stuart Mill, George Lewes, and others, who had known of the brilliant Concord coterie.  Such persons did not ask if Miss Alcott were rich, nor did they care.

In 1868 her father took several of her more recent stories to Roberts Brothers to see about their publication in book form.  Mr. Thomas Niles, a member of the firm, a man of refinement and good judgment, said:  “We do not care just now for volumes of collected stories.  Will not your daughter write us a new book consisting of a single story for girls?”