_Louisa May Alcott._--Louisa May Alcott (1832-88), daughter of Amos Bronson Alcott, became well known as a writer of wholesome fiction, especially for young readers. She began life as a teacher and during the Civil War was an army nurse. “Moods” (1864), her first novel, was widely read, and contains passages of strength. “Little Women” (1868-69), written as a girls’ book, remains her best. A kind of sequel to it was “Little Men; Life at Plumfield with Jo’s Boys” (1871), followed in its turn by “Jo’s Boys and How They Turned Out” (1886). Other similar stories were “An Old-Fashioned Girl” (1870), “Work, a Story of Experience” (1873), partly autobiographical, “Eight Cousins” (1875) and its sequel, “Rose in Bloom” (1876), and “A Modern Mephistopheles” (1877), a disagreeable but vigorous and imaginative study of moral deterioration. Her stories continue to be popular with the young, though the newer juvenile fiction will in time supersede them. _Richard Malcolm Johnston._--Richard Malcolm Johnston (1822-98) was one of the most popular of the Southern writers of his time. The son of a Georgia planter and Baptist clergyman, he in time became a Roman Catholic. Graduating from Mercer University, Georgia, in 1841, he practised law for some years, in 1857 declining a judgeship to become professor of belles-lettres in the University of Georgia. From 1861 till 1882, he was engaged in conducting a boys’ boarding-school, first at Sparta, Georgia, then near Baltimore. In 1864 he published, as “Georgia Sketches,” four stories of life in Georgia. To these, others were added in 1874 under the title of “Dukesborough Tales,” his best book. He afterward wrote “Old Mark Langston” (1884), “Mr. Absalom Billingslea and Other Georgia Folk” (1888), “Ogeechee Cross-Firings” (1889), “The Primes and Their Neighbours” (1891), “Mr. Billy Downs and His Likes” (1892), “Mr. Fortner’s Marital Claims, and Other Stories” (1892), “Widow Guthrie” (1893), “Little Ike Templin, and Other Stories” (1894), “Old Times in Middle Georgia” (1897), and “Pearce Amerson’s Will” (1898). In all he published more than eighty stories. He was not a master of plot, and the structure of his tales is loose and faulty in sequence; but his characters have the magic touch of reality, and his descriptions of ante-bellum Georgia days cannot be neglected.