They had their tea party in that rundown, ramshackle, and downright creepy house. There were Bab and Betty and most of a dozen of their worn-down dolls, and no matter how worn-down or creepy this place might seem to you and I, for these girls and their dolls, it was the most wonderful place for a party any of them could imagine. Then that monstrous dog had stolen all the food, and by the time they chased it down, it'd eaten the last crumbs They followed the dog back into the decrepit barn, and that was how they met its master, a circus run-away, Ben Brown. Ben turned out to be a horse master. As an adult, Alcott was an abolitionist and a feminist. In 1860, Alcott began writing for the Atlantic Monthly. When the American Civil War broke out, she served as a nurse in the Union Hospital at Georgetown, D.C., for six weeks in 1862 1863. She intended to serve three months as a nurse, but halfway through she contracted typhoid and became deathly ill, though she eventually recovered. Her letters home revised and published in the Commonwealth and collected as Hospital Sketches brought her first critical recognition for her observations and humor."