nember Mrs. March's strictures on the ffats and Polly's justifiable criticisms of nny Shaw's friends? and Rose's utter lack snobbishness about Phœbe, the little sculleryid, who eventually was brought up with her? course, Archie's mother objects, at first, to marrying Phoebe, but she is soon reconed-and apologetic. Granted their unworldliness, their high scale moral values, where, then, is the trace of garity that is needed to make breeding ? They pride themselves on their separan from all vulgarity. "My mother is a lady,” lly reflects, "even if”—even if she is not h, like the Shaws. The March girls are ways consoling themselves for their vicissiles by the fact that their parents are gentlek. Well, they are underbred in precisely the y in which, one fancies, the contemporaries Emerson in Concord may well have been derbred. It is the "plain-living" side of the gh thinking." They despised externals, and, the end, externals had their revenge. Breed, as such, is simply not a product of the and cont quit are med life per alik I Ac cha ing und is a hea erd tha no po no m re CO lil ncter is i even she's: Mars: $ for the mos parents are red in precisely? the contemporis av well have ber Living" side of t ised externals Bree eir revenge. t a product of t and Thoreau had it?-the gift of contacts. A contact, be it remember quite the same thing as a relation. are a natural growth of courts. R mediæval dwelling of royalty; then life lived in those cramped chamber perpetual presence of superiors and alike-and lived informally! In Miss Alcott's world, all that is According to the older tradition, a t chaperoned youth would mean lack ing. Here, on the contrary, all the he unchaperoned, while the match-makin is anathema. We did not cut off King head for nothing. The reward of th eroned daughter is to make a good that rigid school, conventions are jud nobly enough, Heaven knows! point of view of morals alone (of not of historic or evolutionary mo many conventions are thereby dam result is a little like what one has contemporary Norway. "Underbred likely too strong a word; yet one doe [189] arry, very young, your first playmate. Any who has lived in the more modern New land village knows perfectly well that le still marry, very young, their first playes, and that disaster often results. Nor can always depend on the protection of a lion is necessarily invisible. Granted that Jo's ocious sense was right, and that it would been a mistake for her to marry Laurie; h of us believes that, in real life, she would have made the mistake? You cannot deI on young things in their teens to foresee future of their temperaments accurately. cannot but feel that if Mrs. March really the complete unfitness of those two for other, it was her duty to put a few conional obstacles in their path. erhaps all this was part of what my friend nt by lack of breeding in the traditional e: the social laissez-aller in extraordinary I perhaps not eternally maintainable?) Dination with moral purity. But I suspect she referred, as well, to another aspect Tiss Alcott's environment: to the unmistak tha thei dre my mo WO of in: the mu the ext se br in pe th CO A it f m Erst playmate. A more modern N rfectly well the ng, their first pla n results. Nor a rotection of a li Granted that Jo and that it woul to marry Laure real life, she wok ? You cannot de r teens to forese ments accuratel Irs. March real of those two for to put a few cr path. of what my friend in the tradition in extraordinar y maintainable? ty. But I suspe to another aspect : to the unmistak that they did not care; that the si their meals, their household ser dress, their every day manners (in s myth about Amy) was simplicity of mon, not of the intelligent, kind. would not want to spend a week in of any one of them. Nor had their wise the quality of austerity. any the pies that the older March girls muffs (the management whereof w the ever unsolved riddles of my child in No: in so far as breeding is a externals, one must admit that the sense in calling Miss Alcott's peo bred. Perhaps we do not choose to ing a matter of externals. In that, perfectly agree with Miss Alcot themselves; and to that we shall come. For what is incontrovertible is Alcott's work is a genuine document I have spoken of the unimpeacha ity of Miss Alcott's world. Charlie for having drunk one glass of cham much. That is the worst sin commit [191] en him and her own kin. The moment he We're the elect, and you'll be damned; With God's own reprobates. - transcendental Mr. March would never e sung it; but he and his knew something to those resolute discriminations. nother point is perhaps even more interg. There are not, I believe, any other ks in the world so blatantly full of moral-of moral issues, and moral tests, and als passionately abided by—and at the |