Her enjoyment of Walpole was so great that her family decided to try its fine air, as they were tired of city life and needed a change of scene. A friend offered them a house there, rent free, and in their usual impromptu way they left Boston and arrived in the country village, bag and baggage. Mr. Alcott was overjoyed to have a garden in which to work, and Mrs. Alcott was glad to be near her niece, whose guest Louisa had been up to that time. Louisa's comment on their arrival in her diary was: "Busy and happy times as we settle in the little house in the lane, near by my dear ravine--plays, picnics, pleasant people and good neighbors." Despite the good times, it is evident that she was not idle, for she says, "Finished fairy book in September.... Better than _Flower Fables_. Now, I must try to sell it." In September Anna had an offer to become a teacher in the great idiot asylum in Syracuse. Her sensitive nature shrank from the work, but with real self-sacrifice she accepted it for the sake of the family, and went off in October. Meanwhile Louisa had been thinking deeply about her future, and her diary tells the story of a decision she made, quite the most important one of her life. She writes: "November; decided to seek my fortune, so with my little trunk of home-made clothes, $40 earned by stories sent to the _Gazette_, and my MSS., I set forth with mother's blessing one rainy day in the dullest month in the year." She went straight to Boston, where she writes: "Found it too late to do anything with the book (the new one she had written at Walpole) so put it away and tried for teaching, sewing, or any honest work. Won't go home to sit idle while I have a head and a pair of hands." Good for you, Louisa--you are the stuff that success is made of! That her courage had its reward is shown by the fact that her cousins, the Sewalls, generously offered her a home for the winter with them which she gratefully accepted, but insisted on paying for her board by doing a great deal of sewing for them. She says in her diary: "I sew for Mollie and others and write stories. C. gave me books to notice. Heard Thackeray. Anxious times; Anna very home-sick. Walpole very cold and dull, now the summer butterflies have gone. Got $5 for a tale and $12 for sewing; sent home a Christmas box to cheer the dear souls in the snow-banks." In January she writes: "C. paid $6 for _A Sister's Trial_, gave me more books to notice, and wants more tales." The entries that follow give a vivid picture of her pluck and perseverance in that first winter of fortune-seeking, and no record of deeds could be more graphic than the following entries: