Boston December 18th  Miss V. V. Price  Dear Madam,  My replies to your questions are as follows.  I write in the morning. Any paper or pen suits me. Quiet is all I require. I work till tired, then rest. Winter is the best time. I enjoy solitude very much. I often have a dozen plots in my head  at once  amp; keep them for years. I do not make notes of ideas  amp;c.  I do not enjoy society,  amp; 
         amp; shirk its duties as much as possible.  I read anything that attracts me. Never study. Have no official method of writing, except to use the simplest language, talk about every day life  amp; make interesting  amp; try to make my characters alive.  I take many heroes and heroines from real life, much truer than any imagine.  My favorite authors are Shakespeare, Dante, (?),  Emerson, Carlyle, Thoreau, Geo. Eliot  amp; C. Bronte. I read no modern literature (?). 
        (?). It seems poor stuff when one can have the best of the old writer.  St. Nicholas  amp; Harper are my favorite magazines.  I dislike to receive strangers who come out of mere curiosity, as some hundreds do, forgetting that an author has any right to privacy. Autograph letters I do not answer, nor half the requests for money  amp; advice with every subject from    Who shall I marry?    to    Ought I to wear a bustle?    Mss. I have no time to read  amp;    gush    is very distasteful to me. 
        If you can teach your five hundred pupils to learn to love books but to let authors rest in peace, you will give them a useful lesson  amp; earn the gratitude of the long suffering craft, whose lives are made a burden to them by the modern lion hunter  amp; autograph fiend.  Please give my regards to the young people  amp; thank them for their interest in the little books.  Yrs Truly,  L. M. Alcott   Written above the address and date on the first page  I am an invalid from too much hard work  amp; my right hand is partially paralyzed with writer   s cramp, so as my writing is, as you see, not a copy for your young people to imitate.