But she did not like to teach so well as her father did, and thought that perhaps she could write stories and be paid for them, and earn more money in that way. So she began to write stories. At first nobody would pay her any money for them, but she kept patiently at work, making better and better what she wrote, until in a few years she could earn a good sum by her pen. Then the great civil war came on, and Miss Alcott, like the rest of the people, wished to do something for her country. So she went to Washington as a nurse, and for some time she took care of the poor soldiers who came into the hospital wounded or sick, and she has written a little book about these soldiers which you may have read. But soon she grew ill herself from the labor and anxiety she had in the hospital, and almost died of typhoid fever; since when she has never been the robust, healthy young lady she was before, but was more or less an invalid while writing all those cheerful and entertaining books. And yet to that illness all her success as an author might perhaps be traced. Her "Hospital Sketches," first published in a Boston newspaper, became very popular, and made her name known all over the North. Then she wrote other books, encouraged by the reception given to this, and finally, in 1868, five years after she left the hospital in Washington, she published the first volume of "Little Women." From that day to this she has been constantly gaining in the public esteem, and now perhaps no lady in all the land stands higher. Several hundred thousand volumes of her books have been sold in this country, and probably as many more in England and other European countries.