What Love Can Do. Louisa May Alcott

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       About Louisa May Alcott:

      Louisa May Alcott (November 29, 1832 – March 6, 1888) was an American novelist and poet best known as the author of the novel Little Women (1868) and its sequels Little Men (1871) and Jo's Boys (1886). Raised by her transcendentalist parents, Abigail May and Amos Bronson Alcott in New England, she also grew up among many of the well-known intellectuals of the day such as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry David Thoreau and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

      Alcott's family suffered from financial difficulties, and while she worked to help support the family from an early age, she also sought an outlet in writing. She began to receive critical success for her writing in the 1860s. Early in her career, she sometimes used the pen name A. M. Barnard, under which she wrote novels for young adults that focused on spies, revenge, and cross dressers.

      Published in 1868, Little Women is set in the Alcott family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts and is loosely based on Alcott's childhood experiences with her three sisters. The novel was very well received and is still a popular children's novel today, filmed several times.

      Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist and remained unmarried throughout her life. She died from a stroke, two days after her father died, in Boston on March 6, 1888.

      Source: Wikipedia

      What Love Can Do

      "The small room had nothing in it but a bed, two chairs, and a big chest. A few little gowns hung on the wall, and the only picture was the wintry sky, sparkling with stars, framed by the uncurtained window. But the moon, pausing to peep, saw something touching and heard something pleasant. Two heads in little, round nightcaps lay on one pillow, two pairs of wide-awake blue eyes stared up at the light, and two tongues were going like bell clappers.

      "I'm so glad we finished our shirts in time! It seemed as though we never should, and I don't think six cents is half enough for a great, red flannel shirt with four buttonholes, do you?" said one voice rather wearily.

      "No, but then we each made four, and fifty cents is a good deal of money. Are you sorry we didn't keep our quarters for ourselves?" asked the other voice with an undertone of regret.

      "Yes, I am, till I think how pleased the children will be with our tree, for they don't expect anything at all and will be so surprised. I wish we had more toys to put on it, for it looks so small and mean with only three or four things hanging from it."

      "Oh, it won't hold anymore, so I wouldn't worry about it. The toys are very red and yellow, and I guess the babies won't know how cheap they are but like them as much as if they cost heaps of money."

      With that brave, cheery reply, the four blue eyes turned toward the chest under the window, and the kind moon did her best to light up the tiny tree standing there. A very pitiful little tree it was—only a branch of hemlock in an old flowerpot propped up with bits of coal and hung with a few penny toys earned by the patient fingers of the elder sisters that the younger ones should not be disappointed.

      But in spite of the magical moonlight, the broken branch, with its scanty supply of fruit, looked pathetically poor, and one pair of eyes filled slowly with tears, while the other pair lost their happy look as if a cloud had covered the moonbeams.

      "Are you crying, Dolly?"

      "Not much, Grace."

      "What makes you sad, dear?"

      "I didn't know how poor we were till I saw the tree, and then I couldn't help it," sobbed the elder sister, for at twelve she already knew something of the cares of poverty and missed the happiness that seemed to vanish out of all their lives when Father died.

      "It's dreadful! I never thought we'd have to earn our tree and only be able to get a broken branch, after all, with nothing on it but three sticks of candy, two squeaking dogs, a red cow, and an ugly bird with one feather in its tail." Overcome by a sudden sense of destitution, Grace sobbed even more despairingly than Dolly.

      "Hush, dear. We must cry softly, or Mother will hear and come up; and then we shall have to tell. You know we said we wouldn't mind not having any Christmas, she seemed so sorry about it."

      "I must cry, but I'll be quiet about it."

      So the two heads went under the pillow for a few minutes and not a sound betrayed them as the sisters cried softly in one another's arms, lest Mother should discover that they were no longer careless children, but brave young creatures trying to bear their share of poverty cheerfully.

      When the shower was over, the faces came out shining like roses after rain, and the voices went on again as before.

      "Don't you wish there really was a Santa Claus who knew what we wanted and would come and put two silver half dollars in our stockings, so we could go to see Puss 'n' Boots at the theatre tomorrow afternoon?"