One of the most picturesque figures of Concord in those days was A. Bronson Alcott. I knew him well as a friend of the family, but on looking back I visualize him in two places. He was very long, slab sided and lean, and what you would call pasty faced, with hair that fell to his shoulders. I can see him sitting in his abominable rustic chairs—with a disease that happens to trees making lumps all over them. He made this furniture himself and used to be very proud of it, but I used to run by like mad for fear of being asked to go in and sit on one of those benches, which I felt might make lumps all over _me_. The other picture is Mr. Alcott sitting beside our teacher, a woman, at school. It was one of those first afternoons of spring when all outdoors is calling to boyhood and you can think of a thousand interesting things to do. But this strange creature took up a whole afternoon in reading Bunyan to us! Needless to say, I have sidestepped Bunyan ever since. They tell a story of Mr. Alcott being accosted, in his youth, by a farmer in Bellows Falls, who asked: “What do you do for a living, Mr. Alcott?” “I write.” “Hell! What?” “Thoughts.” “What for?” “For posterity.” Exit farmer. I have always thought that if the good Bronson had lived in the twentieth century he would almost certainly have belonged to that colony which inhabits the district west of Washington Square. Louisa looked very much like her father—pasty and lean, with a very large nose. To me, as a child, she seemed a very unattractive and a most unkissable person, probably because she was quite a masculine type. Her sister May was very different. She was tall and good-looking, with lots of beautiful blond hair. She painted, and later went to Paris to study. It seemed to me she was always lying in a hammock, being rocked and read to by my brother or Julian Hawthorne. Louisa may have been impressed with this picture, as May is the Amy of _Little Women_, and these two boys are supposed to be a composite hero. I have been told I was the little boy who rolled downstairs in his nightgown, in the story of the Pickwick Club entertainment, but do not remember the actual occurrence.