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ISS LOUISA MAY ALCOTT, as every one who has read "Little Women" would easily believe, is the original of her own harum-scarum "Jo." The personal appearance of her heroine corresponds almost exactly to her own at the same age. Tall, blue-eyed, endowed with the thick clustering chestnut "mane," which was poor Jo's sole pride, she was doubtless in her teens somewhat angular and awkward, although at the present time a lady of fine figure and carriage.

Miss Alcott was born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, about fifty years ago. Two years after her birth the family moved to Boston, where her father established a school, which soon became a noted one, in the Temple Building, near the Common. Some of its features, among them the singular rule which compelled an offending pupil to ferule the master, are described in the pages of "Little Men." But the peculiarity of such methods was more apparent than their excellence, and the school soon declined in popularity, partly on this account, and still more because Mr. Alcott refused to deny admission to a colored student. Scholar after scholar left, until at last his only remaining pupils were a little colored boy, one white boy, his daughter Louisa, then between six and seven years old, and her two sisters, the Meg and Beth of "Little Women." At last, he gave up the struggle and removed to Concord. Shortly afterward he went to the neighboring town of Harvard, where he and some friends tried to establish a religious and vegetarian community, (78)