On Picket Duty and Other Tales is an engrossing compilation by Louisa May Alcott containing
four compelling short stories titled On Picket Day The King of Clubs and The Queen of Hearts
The Cross on the Old Church Tower and The Death of John. All the stories have some depth and a
more profound meaning attached to them. Louisa May Alcott was an American novelist poet and
short-story writer best known as the writer of the novel Little Women (1868) Excerpt from the
story On Picket Duty October moonlight shone clearly on the solitary tree draped with gray
moss scarred by lightning and warped by wind looking like a venerable warrior whose long
campaign was nearly done and underneath was posted the guard of four. Behind them twinkled
many camp-fires on a distant plain before them wound a road ploughed by the passage of an army
strewn with the relics of a rout.
