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LAST MOMENTS.

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winter, and life still lingered. She had never been ambitious or vain, or spiteful or envious; but any earthly alloy which clung to her, had indeed been purified away by "cleansing fires," before her spirit left the world. At midnight, on the 2nd of February, 1864, she turned down the leaf of a little book she was reading, and shut it up. As the clock struck one, she said to her mother, "Do you think I am dying, mamma ?”

"I think you are very, very ill to-night, my dear."

"Send for my sister-my feet are so cold. Lift me up!" As her sister came in, she said, "It has come at last! And, with a bright and happy smile, she looked upward and departed.

These are very nearly the words in which Charles Dickens tells us of her last moments; and when he, too, in his turn, had passed into the land of spirits, and his life, too, had to be written, his friend, John Forster, says, "My mention of these pleasures of editorship shall close with what, I think, to him was the greatest. He gave to the world, while yet the name of the writer was unknown to him, the pure and pathetic verses of Adelaide Procter." "Pure and pathetic!" these words express Adelaide Procter's life as well as her poems. She did not attempt lofty things. Simple feelings, simple thoughts, simple lessons, were her province, and so well has she accomplished her life's mission, that we ask for nothing more. There is a place in God's earth for the dove as well as for the eagle -for the violet as well as for the rose. When "Friend Death," as she once called him, came to her, she could meet him with a smile.

XII.

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.

1832-1888.

Birth at Germantown-Boston-A birthday party -A friendly dog-A cottage at Concord-Plays in the barn-Fruitlands-Concord again -Flower Fables-A room in a Boston attic-Hospital nursingHospital Sketches-Moods-The Pathetic Family-Little WomenGood Wives-Little Men-Eight Cousins-Rose in Bloom-Death of Mrs. Alcott-Under the Lilacs—“My baby”—Lulu's Library—Death.

WH

HAT girl has not read Little Women? The story of the four sisters-Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy-is as familiar to most of us as household words. It seems so real, and much of it is real, for Louisa Alcott took her stories from her own experience. "The nearer I keep to nature," she says, "the better my work is." Her creative powers were not of a high order, her range was limited, but she has infinite fun and drollery, some pathos, and a shrewd, if not a deep, insight into character. Her novels of Moods, and A Modern Mephistopheles, are disappointing and feeble, but her girls' stories are admirable, and will always take a very high place in that department of literature. They have been sold by hundreds of thousands, and the demand for them still continues. In Holland there is hardly a girl who has not read Little Women, and Good Wives-in the

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BORN NOVEMBER 29TH, 1832; DIED MARCH 6TH, 1888.

BIRTH AT GERMANTOWN.

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Dutch translation-Under Mother's Wings, and With Their Own Wings, so that the name of Louisa Alcott is as well known in the marshes of the Netherlands as in the crowded cities of America and England.

Her life, especially the earlier part of it, was a perpetual struggle with poverty-not the semi-genteel poverty that has to be contented with one pair of gloves a month, but poverty that has to do without new gloves at all. Her wardrobe was made up of "old clothes from cousins and friends." She had to battle her way to independence inch by inch. Finally, she became the good fairy of her family. Hers might be called an heroic life-full of noble selfsacrifice and labour for others. It was well for her that before the end came she was able to enter into the fruits of her labours; she saw her work crowned with success, and, through her, benefits poured in on those she loved in no stinted measure.

Louisa May Alcott was born at Germantown, in Pennsylvania, on her father's birthday, November 29, 1832. She was, like Jo, the second daughter, and is described as the "prettiest, best little thing in the world, with a fair complexion, dark bright eyes, long dark hair, a high forehead, and a countenance of more than ordinary intelligence."

Her father, Amos Bronson Alcott, was an idealist—a philosopher so full of lofty theories for the good of mankind, that earning money to support his family was quite a secondary consideration. Mrs. Alcott was a large-hearted, energetic woman, and her love for her husband was so great that, in spite of the failure of his schemes, she never lost confidence or trust in him. At the time of Louisa's birth he was taking charge of a school, but he soon gave it up, and the earliest anecdote that is told of her is during the journey from Philadelphia to Boston by steamer. She and her elder sister, Anna, were nicely dressed in clean nankeen frocks, but they had not been long on board before lively

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