Anna, the oldest daughter, was much like her father. She never worried about her soul or her shortcomings as Louisa did; she accepted life as it came, without question, and was of a calm nature, unlike turbulent, questioning Louisa, who had as many moods as there were hours in a day and who found ruling her tempestuous nature the hardest piece of work life offered her. She confesses in her diary: "My quick tongue is always getting me into trouble, and my moodiness makes it hard to be cheerful when I think how poor we are, how much worry it is to live, and how many things I long to do--I never can. So every day is a battle, and I'm so tired I don't want to live, only it's cowardly to die till you have done something." Having made this confession to an unresponsive page of her journal, the restless nature gave up the desire to be a coward, and turned to achieving whatever work might come to her hand to do, little dreaming what was before her in the coming years. She was very fine looking, of which she evidently was conscious, for she says in her diary: "If I look in my glass I try to keep down vanity about my long hair, my well-shaped head, and my good nose." Besides these good points of which she speaks so frankly, she was tall and graceful, with a heavy mass of glossy, chestnut-brown hair. Her complexion was clear and full of color, and her dark-blue eyes were deep-set and very expressive. During those years in Boston, the Alcotts spent two summers in an uncle's roomy house, where they enjoyed such comforts as had not before fallen to their lot, and calm Anna, sweet retiring Beth, or Betty, as she was called, and artistic May, the youngest of the flock, revelled in having rooms of their own, and plenty of space for their own belongings. May was a pretty, golden-haired, blue-eyed child with decided tastes, and an ability to get what she most wanted in life without much effort--an ability which poor Louisa entirely lacked, for her success always came as the result of exhausting work. Louisa was now seventeen years old, and Anna nineteen. At that time came the small-pox siege, and after Anna had recovered partially she was obliged to take a rest, leaving her small school in Louisa's charge. There were twenty scholars, and it was a great responsibility for the girl of seventeen, but she took up the work with such enthusiasm that she managed to captivate her pupils, whose attention she held by illustrating many of their lessons with original stories, telling them in a way they would never forget. When Anna came back the school was so flourishing that Louisa continued to help with the teaching, and it seemed probable that she had found her greatest talent, although little did she guess how many interesting avenues of experience were to widen before her wondering eyes before she was to settle down to her life-work.