Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/65

Rh hate, suffer and hope, worship and pray. Let us enter the first cottage on our way.

Within it is a young and pretty woman and four little boys. Three of them are platting straw. The youngest of these little workers is only three and a half years old. The little home, of one room and a kitchen, exhibits neatness and a certain degree of prosperity. We see well-supplied beds, and in the kitchen many shelves on which are ranged plates and well-scoured, nicely-kept wooden bowls. The young mother is kind and civil, and the boys, nice little fellows, but very pale. Straw-platting, which has now for some time become a branch of industrial labor in the valleys, and which brings a little money into the cottages, is not beneficial to the health of women, and least of all to that of children. It keeps the young ones too quiet, and their tendency to scrofula is increased by the straw-platting, which requires the finger to be always kept moist with water. This is not right, and even this young mother conceded the same. But what can people do? The children are many; they require food and clothing, and there is no other profitable labor in the valley for her and the children, and the father's earnings are not sufficient for them all!

The old, sorrowful story!

Let us look into this second lonely cottage, so small and so queer, that it might have been built by a hobgoblin as a home for himself. And there he comes out of the door. Nay, don't be afraid! It is true, he is as wild-looking and shaggy almost, as one of the aborigines of the country—at least as we fancy them—but he smiles very good-naturedly and mildly for all