Many years ago I used to feel that Louisa Alcott and I were in a certain way bracketed together.  Both were children of Concord in a sense, she by adoption and I through the fact that it had been the home of my forbears for seven generations.  We were nearly of the same age and simultaneously made our first ventures into the world of letters, taking the same theme, the Civil War.  One phase of this she portrayed in her Hospital Sketches, another, I in my Colour Guard.  So we started in the race together but Louisa soon distanced me, emerging presently into matchless proficiency in her books for children.  I sometimes saw her after she had become famous when she was attuning sweetly the hearts of multitudes of children with her fine humanity.  She was a stately handsome woman with a most gracious and unobtrusive manner.  She mingled with her neighbours, one of the quietest members of the circle.  Said a kinswoman of mine who lived within a few doors: 

It is so hard to think of Louisa as being a distinguished personage; she sits down here with her knitting or brings over her bread to be baked in my oven as anybody might do, and chats about village matters, as interested over the engagements of the girls and sympathising with those in sorrow as if she had no broader interest.

She was indeed one of those who bore her honours meekly.  I recall her vividly when she was well past youth, in the enjoyment of the substantial gains success had brought.  In her childhood she had known pinching poverty, for her philosophic father could never exchange his lucubrations for bread and clothes, philosophising, however, none the less.  But her success brought with it no flush, only an opportunity for her pleasant service.  In these years my mood toward her had quite changed; at first I had thought of her as a competitor, perhaps as on my level.  When I learned, however, that about that time she had been reading my History of German Literature with approval, I felt that I was greatly honoured, that a mind of high distinction had condescended to notice my pages.  During the ’80s when the “School of Philosophy” was holding its sessions in the rustic temple on the Lexington Road where her Orphic father was hierophant, it was rumoured that Louisa looked somewhat askance upon the sublimated discussions of the brotherhood that gathered.  What was said was very wise, but far removed from what one finds in children’s books, but Louisa was sometimes present, a dignified hostess to the strangers who came, taking her modest part among the women in the entertainment of the guests but never in the conclave as a participant.  Alas! that she went so prematurely to her grave in “Sleepy Hollow”!