Page:Famous stories from foreign countries.djvu/116



Kettenfeier Rosegger (born in 1843 at Alpel, Steiermark) is a popular and prolific writer of Austria. His father and mother were both charcoal burners in the great forest which he has pictured so often, and his youthful surroundings were most meager. His mother was a woman of talent; she was one of nature’s poets and from her came his mental ability. At seventeen he was apprenticed to a tailor, and in the few years that followed, he worked in sixty-seven different families.

In this way he learned the life of the peasants of his country and at the same time sketched the idea of Waldheimat (Forest Home), his first important work—which has now become a classic—and from which this story is taken.

Later Dr. Svoboda, editor of a paper in Graz, heard of him, and with the aid and cooperation of friends, helped him to an education. His descriptions of the wooded country where he was born, and of peasant life in the Alps, are among the finest in the language.