I finished re-reading Little Women on Friday. I can't actually recall for sure whether this is the first time I've re-read it all the way through as an adult. (I've read sections of it to the kids, but not all the way through.) As middle and high schooler I definitely read it several times, and liked it, but it's not a book that I'd continued to read regularly through adulthood.
I wrote earlier about the themes of family and marriage in the book. That continued to stand out to me in the latter part of the book. Indeed, it's interesting to see how Alcott positions the three sisters differently to examine different types of marriage and aspects of marriage. Meg and John's experience is fairly universal, and the things they struggle with in early marriage (balancing expectations and time in a sustainable way, spending within their means, continuing to have a relationship as a couple with young children) are very universal struggles that most couples will encounter. Amy and Laurie have the most attractive courtship, and here Alcott takes the opportunity to show how even among the courtship of the rich virtue can be followed: with Amy goading Laurie into getting over his self-pity and laziness and Amy overcoming her initial determination to marry the much richer Fred Vaughn for money so she can take care of her family. Even so, the chapter "
My Lord and Lady" where we see Amy and Laurie planning the charitable works they will champion as leading members of society is grating in the way that watching people who have everything way too easy making a example of their planning always is. I think it's perhaps to a certain point that in the final flash-forward chapter, we see Amy and Laurie with their daughter, Beth, who like her namesake is in delicate health. Dealing with the universal pain and worry of a child's ill health gives the couple a chance to show their virtue in much more human way than their plans to create charities to help those living in distressed gentility. And Jo. She and Professor Bhaer as the couple in whom we see an example of two people who share a common set of intellectual and artistic ideals, and a common dream for how to live them out with the school for boys they want to create together.
And yet, in think-pieces about the novel and its recent adaptation, I keep seeing Professor Bhear being described as a dour character who squelches Jo's artistic ambitions and as a "problem" character whom Alcott was forced to introduce to satisfy the insistence by her publisher that she marry off all her surviving characters. I'd like to argue that far from showing Professor Bhaer as an obstacle to Jo's development as a writer, Alcott actually shows him as a positive influence on her maturation as a writer. And in this sense, Professor Bhaer shows himself a much more suitable partner for Jo than her youthful friend Laurie would have been, as Laurie would never have provided her with that encouragement to produce better writing.
When we first meet Jo, we see two types of writing that she's been doing, the "operatic tragedy" which the girls act out in Chapter 2, and the "little book" which Amy burns up which is described thus: "Jo's book was the pride of her heart, and was regarded by her family as a literary sprout of great promise. It was only half a dozen little fairy tales, but Jo had worked over them patiently, putting her whole heart into her work, hoping to make something good enough to print."
A bit later, we actually get a chance to read a piece of Jo's fiction writing, which is reproduced in their Pickwick Portfolio newspaper. "A Masked Marriage: A Tale of Venice" is very much in the operatic tragedy genre.
Gondola after gondola swept up to the marble
steps, and left its lovely load to swell the
brilliant throng that filled the stately halls of Count
Adelon. Knights and ladies, elves and pages, monks
and flower girls, all mingled gaily in the dance.
Sweet voices and rich melody filled the air, and so
with mirth and music the masquerade went on.
"Has your Highness seen the Lady Viola tonight?"
asked a gallant troubadour of the fairy queen who
floated down the hall upon his arm.
"Yes, is she not lovely, though so sad! Her
dress is well chosen, too, for in a week she weds
Count Antonio, whom she passionately hates."
"By my faith, I envy him. Yonder he comes,
arrayed like a bridegroom, except the black mask.
When that is off we shall see how he regards the
fair maid whose heart he cannot win, though her
stern father bestows her hand," returned the troubadour.
"Tis whispered that she loves the young English
artist who haunts her steps, and is spurned by the
old Count," said the lady, as they joined the dance....
When Jo succeeds in getting her first stories printed it's in a newspaper which says that it "didn't pay beginners, only let them print in his paper, and noticed the stories. It was good practice, he said, and when the beginners improved, anyone would pay." What we learn of "The Rival Painters" is fairly vague, but it sounds like it's probably of similar genre to "A Masked Marriage".
"The Rival Painters."
"That sounds well. Read it," said Meg.
With a loud "Hem!" and a long breath, Jo began to read very fast. The girls listened with interest, for the tale was romantic, and somewhat pathetic, as most of the characters died in the end. "I like that about the splendid picture," was Amy's approving remark, as Jo paused.
"I prefer the lovering part. Viola and Angelo are two of our favorite names, isn't that queer?" said Meg, wiping her eyes, for the lovering part was tragical.
"Who wrote it?" asked Beth, who had caught a glimpse of Jo's face.
The reader suddenly sat up, cast away the paper, displaying a flushed countenance, and with a funny mixture of solemnity and excitement replied in a loud voice, "Your sister."
"You?" cried Meg, dropping her work.
"It's very good," said Amy critically.
"I knew it! I knew it! Oh, my Jo, I am so proud!" and Beth ran to hug her sister and exult over this splendid success.
Dear me, how delighted they all were, to be sure! How Meg wouldn't believe it till she saw the words. "Miss Josephine March," actually printed in the paper.
Jo's next step on her writing journey is inspired by a contest in a newspaper that prints sensation stories:
It was a pictorial sheet, and Jo examined the work of art nearest her, idly wondering what fortuitous concatenation of circumstances needed the melodramatic illustration of an Indian in full war costume, tumbling over a precipice with a wolf at his throat, while two infuriated young gentlemen, with unnaturally small feet and big eyes, were stabbing each other close by, and a disheveled female was flying away in the background with her mouth wide open. Pausing to turn a page, the lad saw her looking and, with boyish good nature offered half his paper, saying bluntly, "want to read it? That's a first-rate story."
Jo accepted it with a smile, for she had never outgrown her liking for lads, and soon found herself involved in the usual labyrinth of love, mystery, and murder, for the story belonged to that class of light literature in which the passions have a holiday, and when the author's invention fails, a grand catastrophe clears the stage of one half the dramatis personae, leaving the other half to exult over their downfall.
"Prime, isn't it?" asked the boy, as her eye went down the last paragraph of her portion.
"I think you and I could do as well as that if we tried," returned Jo, amused at his admiration of the trash.
"I should think I was a pretty lucky chap if I could. She makes a good living out of such stories, they say." and he pointed to the name of Mrs. S.L.A.N.G. Northbury, under the title of the tale.
"Do you know her?" asked Jo, with sudden interest.
"No, but I read all her pieces, and I know a fellow who works in the office where this paper is printed."
"Do you say she makes a good living out of stories like this?" and Jo looked more respectfully at the agitated group and thickly sprinkled exclamation points that adorned the page.
"Guess she does! She knows just what folks like, and gets paid well for writing it."
Here the lecture began, but Jo heard very little of it, for while Professor Sands was prosing away about Belzoni, Cheops, scarabei, and hieroglyphics, she was covertly taking down the address of the paper, and boldly resolving to try for the hundred-dollar prize offered in its columns for a sensational story. By the time the lecture ended and the audience awoke, she had built up a splendid fortune for herself (not the first founded on paper), and was already deep in the concoction of her story, being unable to decide whether the duel should come before the elopement or after the murder.
She said nothing of her plan at home, but fell to work next day, much to the disquiet of her mother, who always looked a little anxious when 'genius took to burning'. Jo had never tried this style before, contenting herself with very mild romances for The Spread Eagle. Her experience and miscellaneous reading were of service now, for they gave her some idea of dramatic effect, and supplied plot, language, and costumes. Her story was as full of desperation and despair as her limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to make it, and having located it in Lisbon, she wound up with an earthquake, as a striking and appropriate denouement. The manuscript was privately dispatched, accompanied by a note, modestly saying that if the tale didn't get the prize, which the writer hardly dared expect, she would be very glad to receive any sum it might be considered worth.
Six weeks is a long time to wait, and a still longer time for a girl to keep a secret, but Jo did both, and was just beginning to give up all hope of ever seeing her manuscript again, when a letter arrived which almost took her breath away, for on opening it, a check for a hundred dollars fell into her lap. For a minute she stared at it as if it had been a snake, then she read her letter and began to cry. If the amiable gentleman who wrote that kindly note could have known what intense happiness he was giving a fellow creature, I think he would devote his leisure hours, if he has any, to that amusement, for Jo valued the letter more than the money, because it was encouraging, and after years of effort it was so pleasant to find that she had learned to do something, though it was only to write a sensation story.
A prouder young woman was seldom seen than she, when, having composed herself, she electrified the family by appearing before them with the letter in one hand, the check in the other, announcing that she had won the prize. Of course there was a great jubilee, and when the story came everyone read and praised it, though after her father had told her that the language was good, the romance fresh and hearty, and the tragedy quite thrilling, he shook his head, and said in his unworldly way...
"You can do better than this, Jo. Aim at the highest, and never mind the money."
"I think the money is the best part of it. What will you do with such a fortune?" asked Amy, regarding the magic slip of paper with a reverential eye.
"Send Beth and Mother to the seaside for a month or two," answered Jo promptly.
To the seaside they went, after much discussion, and though Beth didn't come home as plump and rosy as could be desired, she was much better, while Mrs. March declared she felt ten years younger. So Jo was satisfied with the investment of her prize money, and fell to work with a cheery spirit, bent on earning more of those delightful checks. She did earn several that year, and began to feel herself a power in the house, for by the magic of a pen, her 'rubbish' turned into comforts for them all. The Duke's Daughter paid the butcher's bill, A Phantom Hand put down a new carpet, and the Curse of the Coventrys proved the blessing of the Marches in the way of groceries and gowns.
It's perhaps significant that Father, who is always the voice of truth and wisdom in Little Women, observes that "You can do better than this, Jo." I think from a writing perspective it's worth pausing on why. I think there's a tendency (especially among people who themselves grew up feeling persecuted for writing or reading genre fiction, which is at times accused of being trash fiction simply because of its subject matter is magic or the future or what have you) to assume that Jo's father and later Professor Bhaer object to these more sensational stories simply because they deal with fantastical subject matter. However, it's worth noting that Mr March has been supportive of Jo's previous writing, which was also fantastical in its settings. I think that the objection is two-fold. I think that Alcott (and the characters who tend to speak the truth as she sees it) does think that there's potentially a morally corrupting influence in stories which focus primarily on the lower passions: revenge, despair, hatred, etc. But more importantly, I think that it's obvious to the more discerning readers that Jo is writing of things about which she doesn't know very much. As the narrator says, the story was "as full of desperation and despair as her limited acquaintance with those uncomfortable emotions enabled her to make it." Jo is writing about dark stuff in hopes of making her story exciting, but she doesn't actually know much about these human experiences, so she's having to fill the gaps by extrapolating and using examples from other books. She'd tell a more human story if she focused on feelings and experiences she actually knew.
Jo's next literary experience is with the publication of her novel. Her travails will sound familiar to anyone who's struggled with writing. After shopping it around to several publishers, she finds one who will publish it "on condition that she would cut it down one third, and omit all the parts which she particularly admired."
She hesitates on what to do, and ends up agreeing to shorten it while taking everyone's advice at once:
[W]ith Spartan firmness, the young authoress laid her first-born on her table, and chopped it up as ruthlessly as any ogre. In the hope of pleasing everyone, she took everyone's advice, and like the old man and his donkey in the fable suited nobody.
Her father liked the metaphysical streak which had unconsciously got into it, so that was allowed to remain though she had her doubts about it. Her mother thought that there was a trifle too much description. Out, therefore it came, and with it many necessary links in the story. Meg admired the tragedy, so Jo piled up the agony to suit her, while Amy objected to the fun, and, with the best intentions in life, Jo quenched the spritly scenes which relieved the somber character of the story. Then, to complicate the ruin, she cut it down one third, and confidingly sent the poor little romance, like a picked robin, out into the big, busy world to try its fate.
Well, it was printed, and she got three hundred dollars for it, likewise plenty of praise and blame, both so much greater than she expected that she was thrown into a state of bewilderment from which it took her some time to recover.
"You said, Mother, that criticism would help me. But how can it, when it's so contradictory that I don't know whether I've written a promising book or broken all the ten commandments?" cried poor Jo, turning over a heap of notices, the perusal of which filled her with pride and joy one minute, wrath and dismay the next. "This man says, 'An exquisite book, full of truth, beauty, and earnestness.' 'All is sweet, pure, and healthy.'" continued the perplexed authoress. "The next, 'The theory of the book is bad, full of morbid fancies, spiritualistic ideas, and unnatural characters.' Now, as I had no theory of any kind, don't believe in Spiritualism, and copied my characters from life, I don't see how this critic can be right. Another says, 'It's one of the best American novels which has appeared for years.' (I know better than that), and the next asserts that 'Though it is original, and written with great force and feeling, it is a dangerous book.' 'Tisn't! Some make fun of it, some overpraise, and nearly all insist that I had a deep theory to expound, when I only wrote it for the pleasure and the money. I wish I'd printed the whole or not at all, for I do hate to be so misjudged."
Her family and friends administered comfort and commendation liberally. Yet it was a hard time for sensitive, high-spirited Jo, who meant so well and had apparently done so ill. But it did her good, for those whose opinion had real value gave her the criticism which is an author's best education, and when the first soreness was over, she could laugh at her poor little book, yet believe in it still, and feel herself the wiser and stronger for the buffeting she had received.
The story moves on to other topics are Jo recovers from the experience of publishing her novel, and the next step we hear is when she is staying in a boarding house in New York (where she makes the acquaintance of Professor Bhaer) and she goes to the offices of a newspaper called the Weekly Volcano and offers them a sensation story in the mold of those she wrote earlier. The publisher offers to take her stories but wants changes.
"We'll take this (editors never say I), if you don't object to a few alterations. It's too long, but omitting the passages I've marked will make it just the right length," he said, in a businesslike tone.
Jo hardly knew her own MS. again, so crumpled and underscored were its pages and paragraphs, but feeling as a tender parent might on being asked to cut off her baby's legs in order that it might fit into a new cradle, she looked at the marked passages and was surprised to find that all the moral reflections—which she had carefully put in as ballast for much romance—had been stricken out.
"But, Sir, I thought every story should have some sort of a moral, so I took care to have a few of my sinners repent."
Mr. Dashwoods's editorial gravity relaxed into a smile, for Jo had forgotten her 'friend', and spoken as only an author could.
"People want to be amused, not preached at, you know. Morals don't sell nowadays." Which was not quite a correct statement, by the way.
Jo changes her writing to suit his demands since she has little experience with the kind of life he wants to see portrayed, she turns to research.
Mr. Dashwood rejected any but thrilling tales, and as thrills could not be produced except by harrowing up the souls of the readers, history and romance, land and sea, science and art, police records and lunatic asylums, had to be ransacked for the purpose. Jo soon found that her innocent experience had given her but few glimpses of the tragic world which underlies society, so regarding it in a business light, she set about supplying her deficiencies with characteristic energy. Eager to find material for stories, and bent on making them original in plot, if not masterly in execution, she searched newspapers for accidents, incidents, and crimes. She excited the suspicions of public librarians by asking for works on poisons. She studied faces in the street, and characters, good, bad, and indifferent, all about her. She delved in the dust of ancient times for facts or fictions so old that they were as good as new, and introduced herself to folly, sin, and misery, as well as her limited opportunities allowed. She thought she was prospering finely, but unconsciously she was beginning to desecrate some of the womanliest attributes of a woman's character. She was living in bad society, and imaginary though it was, its influence affected her, for she was feeding heart and fancy on dangerous and unsubstantial food, and was fast brushing the innocent bloom from her nature by a premature acquaintance with the darker side of life, which comes soon enough to all of us.
Alcott herself made a living off writing sensation stories prior to her breakout success with the much more realistic Little Women, and so whether we agree with Alcott in her feelings about sensation stories I think it is only fair to assume that she is documenting her own experience in saying that Jo is feeding her imagination of "dangerous and unsubstantial food". Further, though, I think it's also fair to assume that Jo is probably not writing very good work. She's not writing about people she knows much about. "[S]he went abroad for her characters and scenery, and banditti, counts, gypsies, nuns, and duchesses appeared upon her stage, and played their parts with as much accuracy and spirit as could be expected. Her readers were not particular about such trifles as grammar, punctuation, and probability...." So I think it's fair to say that from Alcott's authorial point of view, Jo is doing badly in two respects: morally she's indulging in base emotions, and artistically she's portraying locations, people, and emotions of which she knows little and thus can't make an accurate portrayal.
Contrary to a number of articles floating around (probably inspired by various film adaptations) Professor Bhaer never actually reads one of Jo's sensation stories. He does, however, chance upon a copy of a paper that prints sensation stories (not the one Jo writes for, and her stories she has printed without a byline anyway because she's embarrassed at the idea of people finding out what she's writing) and the following exchange occurs:
Mr. Bhaer caught sight of a picture on the hat, and unfolding it, said with great disgust, "I wish these papers did not come in the house. They are not for children to see, nor young people to read. It is not well, and I haf no patience with those who make this harm."
Jo glanced at the sheet and saw a pleasing illustration composed of a lunatic, a corpse, a villain, and a viper. She did not like it, but the impulse that made her turn it over was not one of displeasure but fear, because for a minute she fancied the paper was the Volcano. It was not, however, and her panic subsided as she remembered that even if it had been and one of her own tales in it, there would have been no name to betray her. She had betrayed herself, however, by a look and a blush, for though an absent man, the Professor saw a good deal more than people fancied. He knew that Jo wrote, and had met her down among the newspaper offices more than once, but as she never spoke of it, he asked no questions in spite of a strong desire to see her work. Now it occurred to him that she was doing what she was ashamed to own, and it troubled him. He did not say to himself, "It is none of my business. I've no right to say anything," as many people would have done. He only remembered that she was young and poor, a girl far away from mother's love and father's care, and he was moved to help her with an impulse as quick and natural as that which would prompt him to put out his hand to save a baby from a puddle. All this flashed through his mind in a minute, but not a trace of it appeared in his face, and by the time the paper was turned, and Jo's needle threaded, he was ready to say quite naturally, but very gravely...
"Yes, you are right to put it from you. I do not think that good young girls should see such things. They are made pleasant to some, but I would more rather give my boys gunpowder to play with than this bad trash."
"All may not be bad, only silly, you know, and if there is a demand for it, I don't see any harm in supplying it. Many very respectable people make an honest living out of what are called sensation stories," said Jo, scratching gathers so energetically that a row of little slits followed her pin.
"There is a demand for whisky, but I think you and I do not care to sell it. If the respectable people knew what harm they did, they would not feel that the living was honest. They haf no right to put poison in the sugarplum, and let the small ones eat it. No, they should think a little, and sweep mud in the street before they do this thing."
After this discussion, Jo sits down with her stories and reads them over again.
As soon as she went to her room, she got out her papers, and carefully reread every one of her stories. Being a little shortsighted, Mr. Bhaer sometimes used eye glasses, and Jo had tried them once, smiling to see how they magnified the fine print of her book. Now she seemed to have on the Professor's mental or moral spectacles also, for the faults of these poor stories glared at her dreadfully and filled her with dismay.
"They are trash, and will soon be worse trash if I go on, for each is more sensational than the last. I've gone blindly on, hurting myself and other people, for the sake of money. I know it's so, for I can't read this stuff in sober earnest without being horribly ashamed of it, and what should I do if they were seen at home or Mr. Bhaer got hold of them?"
I think it's important to recognize that Jo comes to this conclusion on her own, in private, and that there's no pressure from Bhaer having read her stories or asking if she has stopped writing them. And given that we've seen her pushed into writing in this fashion by an editor with a very specific idea of the sort of story that he wants (and idea that does not match the type of story that Jo was originally writing) I think that to a great extent what we're seeing here is Jo realizing that she's stopped writing the kind of story that she herself can respect and like.
Jo then briefly swings, pendulum like, in the opposite direction and tries writing heavily didactic stories, in a section which is clearly also written with the sharp satiric pen of Alcott's experience in the publishing world.
Jo wrote no more sensational stories, deciding that the money did not pay for her share of the sensation, but going to the other extreme, as is the way with people of her stamp, she took a course of Mrs. Sherwood, Miss Edgeworth, and Hannah More, and then produced a tale which might have been more properly called an essay or a sermon, so intensely moral was it. She had her doubts about it from the beginning, for her lively fancy and girlish romance felt as ill at ease in the new style as she would have done masquerading in the stiff and cumbrous costume of the last century. She sent this didactic gem to several markets, but it found no purchaser, and she was inclined to agree with Mr. Dashwood that morals didn't sell.
Then she tried a child's story, which she could easily have disposed of if she had not been mercenary enough to demand filthy lucre for it. The only person who offered enough to make it worth her while to try juvenile literature was a worthy gentleman who felt it his mission to convert all the world to his particular belief. But much as she liked to write for children, Jo could not consent to depict all her naughty boys as being eaten by bears or tossed by mad bulls because they did not go to a particular Sabbath school, nor all the good infants who did go as rewarded by every kind of bliss, from gilded gingerbread to escorts of angels when they departed this life with psalms or sermons on their lisping tongues. So nothing came of these trials, and Jo corked up her inkstand, and said in a fit of very wholesome humility...
"I don't know anything. I'll wait until I do before I try again, and meantime, 'sweep mud in the street' if I can't do better, that's honest, at least."
I have a personal soft spot for Jo's conclusion here, because it's similar to a decision I myself made about writing fiction while I was in college. I'd spent my high school years writing a few dozen short stories and a three novels, and during that time I'd gradually improved to the point where I'd finally had a couple of short stories published, though in non-paying markets. But as I assessed my increasingly competent writing at the age of twenty I concluded that I was mostly writing clever variations on what I'd read in other books. I didn't yet know myself and the world well enough to be writing based on my own knowledge of people. And so I decided to set it aside until I knew more.
Jo doesn't wait as long to start writing again as I did, but she has plenty of difficult experiences in the meantime, with her rejection of Laurie and her nursing of Beth through her final illness. It's as Jo is struggling to fill Beth's place in the March household, consigning herself to a "little way" of small duties helping others, that Mrs. March sees her unhappiness and encourages her to start writing again. And this time, Jo writes from the heart and from experience and finds a success that surprises even her.
Jo never knew how it happened, but something got into that story that went straight to the hearts of those who read it, for when her family had laughed and cried over it, her father sent it, much against her will, to one of the popular magazines, and to her utter surprise, it was not only paid for, but others requested. Letters from several persons, whose praise was honor, followed the appearance of the little story, newspapers copied it, and strangers as well as friends admired it. For a small thing it was a great success, and Jo was more astonished than when her novel was commended and condemned all at once.
"I don't understand it. What can there be in a simple little story like that to make people praise it so?" she said, quite bewildered.
"There is truth in it, Jo, that's the secret. Humor and pathos make it alive, and you have found your style at last. You wrote with no thoughts of fame and money, and put your heart into it, my daughter. You have had the bitter, now comes the sweet. Do your best, and grow as happy as we are in your success."
"If there is anything good or true in what I write, it isn't mine. I owe it all to you and Mother and Beth," said Jo, more touched by her father's words than by any amount of praise from the world.
So taught by love and sorrow, Jo wrote her little stories, and sent them away to make friends for themselves and her, finding it a very charitable world to such humble wanderers, for they were kindly welcomed, and sent home comfortable tokens to their mother, like dutiful children whom good fortune overtakes.
She does not, at this juncture, write a story equivalent to Little Women, though many adaptations show her doing this. Alcott does have her heroine do this, but not until twenty years of story time later, when in Jo's Boys, the sequel to Little Men, which is the sequel to Little Women, there is a chapter entitled "
Jo's Last Scrape" in which she writes a book apparently similar to Little Women and like Alcott experiences a surprise best-seller which at last makes her and her family financially secure.
However, Jo's writing does touch one reader particularly deeply. When Professor Bhaer arrives to visit, and the two of them at last declare their attachment to each other and become engaged, Jo asks him what brought him from New York to visit her, and he pulls out a poem of hers that he read in the newspaper. This is, in fact, the first time that Bhaer has read her writing, and he is moved by it to come and see her. I think that's a good a testament to the maturation of Jo as a writer as any, and also a sign that when he spoke to Jo about the problems with sensation stories, he set her back on a path toward writing truer and better things, things that were truly the best that she was capable of. As such, it's probably appropriate to close with that poem which brings Professor Bhaer back into her life and causes him to say that he is eager to read all of the book in which she keeps her compositions.
IN THE GARRET
Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and worn by time,
All fashioned and filled, long ago,
By children now in their prime.
Four little keys hung side by side,
With faded ribbons, brave and gay
When fastened there, with childish pride,
Long ago, on a rainy day.
Four little names, one on each lid,
Carved out by a boyish hand,
And underneath there lieth hid
Histories of the happy band
Once playing here, and pausing oft
To hear the sweet refrain,
That came and went on the roof aloft,
In the falling summer rain.
"Meg" on the first lid, smooth and fair.
I look in with loving eyes,
For folded here, with well-known care,
A goodly gathering lies,
The record of a peaceful life—
Gifts to gentle child and girl,
A bridal gown, lines to a wife,
A tiny shoe, a baby curl.
No toys in this first chest remain,
For all are carried away,
In their old age, to join again
In another small Meg's play.
Ah, happy mother! Well I know
You hear, like a sweet refrain,
Lullabies ever soft and low
In the falling summer rain.
"Jo" on the next lid, scratched and worn,
And within a motley store
Of headless dolls, of schoolbooks torn,
Birds and beasts that speak no more,
Spoils brought home from the fairy ground
Only trod by youthful feet,
Dreams of a future never found,
Memories of a past still sweet,
Half-writ poems, stories wild,
April letters, warm and cold,
Diaries of a wilful child,
Hints of a woman early old,
A woman in a lonely home,
Hearing, like a sad refrain—
"Be worthy, love, and love will come,"
In the falling summer rain.
My Beth! the dust is always swept
From the lid that bears your name,
As if by loving eyes that wept,
By careful hands that often came.
Death canonized for us one saint,
Ever less human than divine,
And still we lay, with tender plaint,
Relics in this household shrine—
The silver bell, so seldom rung,
The little cap which last she wore,
The fair, dead Catherine that hung
By angels borne above her door.
The songs she sang, without lament,
In her prison-house of pain,
Forever are they sweetly blent
With the falling summer rain.
Upon the last lid's polished field—
Legend now both fair and true
A gallant knight bears on his shield,
"Amy" in letters gold and blue.
Within lie snoods that bound her hair,
Slippers that have danced their last,
Faded flowers laid by with care,
Fans whose airy toils are past,
Gay valentines, all ardent flames,
Trifles that have borne their part
In girlish hopes and fears and shames,
The record of a maiden heart
Now learning fairer, truer spells,
Hearing, like a blithe refrain,
The silver sound of bridal bells
In the falling summer rain.
Four little chests all in a row,
Dim with dust, and worn by time,
Four women, taught by weal and woe
To love and labor in their prime.
Four sisters, parted for an hour,
None lost, one only gone before,
Made by love's immortal power,
Nearest and dearest evermore.
Oh, when these hidden stores of ours
Lie open to the Father's sight,
May they be rich in golden hours,
Deeds that show fairer for the light,
Lives whose brave music long shall ring,
Like a spirit-stirring strain,
Souls that shall gladly soar and sing
In the long sunshine after rain.
