Page:How and Why Library 079.jpg

 stove, as white and shining as a bath tub, to keep the house warm. The mother knits and makes embroidery to sell. The men carve wood to sell to travellers the next summer. They make bowls and cups and boxes and napkin rings, and clock cases carved with edelweiss and alpine roses and chamois heads, and with spires like the peaks of the Alps.

The children go to school in the village below. It is a mile away, but they get there in about two minutes. They slide down, on sleds. That is fun. But, oh dear, they have to climb back, after school! Once, when it was snowing hard, Marie Louise and some little playmates lost their way, and they got so cold and tired they fell down and went to sleep in the snow. Who do you think found them and brought their fathers to carry them home?

Big, white and tan, Saint Bernard dogs! The dogs live with some good, religious Brothers away up on the mountains, and they go out to find lost people. The dogs were so glad to find the children that they barked and called everybody for a mile around. They stood there by the snow-covered children until men came. The Swiss children love the big dogs.

Victor held Marie Louise on his lap that night, as if he would never let his little sister go, again. While she snuggled there, he finished a clock case. In it he made a tiny room with a spring-door. When it is time for the clock to strike, this door flies open in the most surprising way, and a little bird hops out and says:

"Cuckoo!  Cuckoo!   Cuckoo!"

Dear, dear, so late as that? It's time you were hurrying home to America. See, , , , , , , , , , , Italian Art, in article on , Greek and Roman Literature, in article on , ,.