Page:Daughters of Genius.djvu/98

 vided with husbands according to the pleasure of the translator, who owns to never having seen the second volume. The eminently respectable Bhaer, therefore, does not appear, and Jo and Laurie are comfortably established upon a farm in wedded happiness.

The home of Miss Alcott in Concord, Massachusetts, is an object of interest to visitors. It is described in one of the letters of Lydia Maria Child, written in 1876:

"The house of the Alcotts took my fancy greatly. When they bought the place the house was so very old, that it was thrown into the bargain with the supposition that it was fit for nothing but fire-wood. But Mr. Alcott has an architectural taste more intelligible than his Orphic sayings. He let every old rafter and beam stay in its place, changed old ovens and ash-holes into Saxon arched alcoves, and added a wash-woman's old shanty to the rear. The result is a house full of queer nooks and corners and all manner of juttings in and out. It seems as if the spirit of some old architect had brought it from the Middle Ages and dropped it down in Concord, preserving much better resemblance to the place whence it was brought than does the Virgin Mary's house, which the angel carried from Bethlehem to Loretto. The capable Alcott daughters painted and papered the interior themselves. And gradually the artist daughter filled up all the nooks and corners with panels on which she had painted birds or flowers, and over the open fire-places she painted mottoes in ancient English characters. Owls blink at you and faces peep from the most unexpected places. The whole leaves a general impression of harmony of a mediaeval sort, though different parts of the house seem to have stopped in a dance that became confused because some of the party did not keep time. The walls are covered with choice engravings and paintings by the artist daughter. She really is an artist."