Little Women

On a December evening, with snow drifting down outside and firelight flickering within, four sisters sat knitting and grumbling by turns, as sisters will. "Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," Jo declared from her undignified sprawl upon the rug, and so began a chorus of complaints—Meg lamenting her old dress, Amy sniffing over the injustice of other girls possessing pretty things, until gentle Beth reminded them all that they still had Father and Mother and each other. Yet even this cheerful observation could not banish the shadow that fell across their faces, for Father was far away with the army, and the unspoken fear that he might never return hung in the air like the December chill itself.

The March sisters—Meg at sixteen, Jo at fifteen, thirteen-year-old Beth, and twelve-year-old Amy—found themselves caught between the impulse toward small pleasures and the call to sacrifice. Each had a dollar to spend, and each harbored secret wishes: Jo longed for a book, Beth for new music, Amy for drawing pencils, and Meg simply wanted pretty things she could not have. Their mother had proposed a Christmas without gifts, for times were hard and the soldiers were suffering, but the girls could not quite resign themselves to the idea—not yet.

As they debated and squabbled in the manner peculiar to close families, Jo's boyish ways clashed delightfully with Amy's affected airs, until peacemaking Beth sang them into better humor. Meg attempted to lecture her sisters into propriety, though she was hardly less a child herself when it came to playing dress-up for their Christmas theatricals. The conversation wandered from complaints to the play they were rehearsing—Jo's own "Operatic Tragedy" featuring witches and villains—and the parlor filled with melodramatic shrieks and collapsed fainting scenes until laughter chased away all ill temper.

Into this merry chaos stepped Marmee, their tall, motherly, noble-looking mother, carrying the greatest gift of all: a letter from Father. The girls flew about making her comfortable, and at supper she shared the precious pages. Father wrote cheerfully of camp life but closed with words that touched every heart—urging his "little women" to fight their bosom enemies bravely, conquer themselves beautifully, and work so that the hard days would not be wasted. Tears flowed freely then, and each girl resolved to do better: Meg would think less of her looks, Jo would curb her wildness, Amy would be less selfish, and quiet Beth simply took up her knitting with renewed purpose.

It was Marmee who gave their resolutions a shape, reminding them of the childhood game of Pilgrim's Progress—traveling from the cellar's City of Destruction to the housetop Celestial City with bundles on their backs. Now, she said, they might play it in earnest, for their burdens were real enough: vanity, temper, selfishness, and fear. She promised them guidebooks to be found beneath their pillows on Christmas morning. And so the sisters took up their sewing with lighter hearts, dividing the long seams into continents and stitching their way around the world while they talked and planned.

Before bed they gathered around Beth's old piano, singing together as they had done since they could lisp their first nursery rhymes—Meg's flute-like voice, Jo's wandering croak, Amy's chirp, and Beth's gentle accompaniment weaving it all into something whole. It was a household custom as warm and familiar as their mother's lullaby, a small Celestial City they created each night before sleep.

And so the March sisters began their pilgrimage anew, armed with love, good intentions, and the promise of Christmas morning—when the true nature of their journey would reveal itself in four small books waiting beneath four hopeful pillows.

In the gray hush of Christmas morning, Jo March was first to stir, and though no stockings hung at the fireplace to greet her—those plump, promising stockings of Christmases past—she remembered her mother's promise and slipped a hand beneath her pillow. There lay a small crimson-covered book, that beautiful old story of the best life ever lived, and Jo knew at once it was meant as a guidebook for any pilgrim setting forth on a long journey. She roused Meg with a cheerful "Merry Christmas," and soon all four sisters sat together, each clutching her own little volume—green, dove-colored, blue, and crimson—while the winter sky blushed rosy with the coming day.

It was Meg who proposed, with gentle earnestness, that they return to the faithful habit of reading each morning, a practice neglected since Father went away and the war unsettled everything. Jo leaned cheek to cheek with her elder sister and read in rare quietness, while Beth whispered to Amy that they must follow the example set before them. "I'm glad mine is blue," said Amy, and the rooms grew very still, touched only by the soft turning of pages and the creeping Christmas sun.

When they hurried downstairs to thank Marmee, she had already gone—off to help some poor creature who came begging, as Hannah reported with fond exasperation. The girls busied themselves with the modest presents tucked under the sofa: handkerchiefs marked with Beth's laborious stitching, new army slippers for Jo to dance about in, and Amy's cologne—though that young lady had slipped out early, they soon discovered, to exchange her little bottle for a handsomer one. "I'm truly trying not to be selfish any more," Amy confessed, flushed and humble, and her sisters embraced her warmly for the effort.

But the true test of the morning's lessons came when Mrs. March returned and told her daughters of a poor German family nearby—a sick mother, a newborn babe, six children huddled together with no fire and nothing to eat. Would they give away their breakfast as a Christmas gift? For one hungry minute no one spoke, and then Jo burst out, "I'm so glad you came before we began!" Off they went, a queer little procession through back streets, bearing buckwheats and muffins to the wretched Hummel household. How the pale children's eyes widened! "Ach, mein Gott! It is good angels come to us!" cried the mother, and the March girls—called *Engel-kinder* for the first time in their lives—fed those hungry little ones like so many birds, laughing and talking until comfort filled the bare room. They returned home to bread and milk, yet I think there were not four merrier people in all the city than those hungry girls who gave away their Christmas breakfast.

The remainder of the day belonged to preparations for the evening's theatrical—an *operatic tragedy* of the sisters' own devising, performed with pasteboard guitars, tin-spangled robes, and Jo's treasured russet boots. The melodrama of Hugo the villain, the witch Hagar, and the lovers Roderigo and Zara unfolded with much passion and one spectacular collapse of the tower, burying the unhappy pair beneath the scenery. The audience shrieked, the cot bed folded up beneath them, and all dissolved into laughter just as Hannah appeared to summon the company to supper.

And what a supper! Ice cream, cake, French bonbons, and hothouse flowers adorned the table—a gift, it turned out, from old Mr. Laurence next door, whose lonely grandson had watched the frolic from afar. The girls marveled, Jo declared she meant to know that boy someday, and Marmee smiled at the unexpected kindness. Yet amid the plenty, Beth nestled close and whispered that she wished she could send her flowers to Father, afraid he was not having such a merry Christmas as they.

So the day closed in warmth and gratitude, the little books on their pillows a reminder that the pilgrimage toward goodness had only just begun.