[Illustration: THE BLUE BEAD WAS A CHARM AGAINST THE EVIL EYE
(_page 2_)]
Friends In Strange
Garments
BY
ANNA MILO UPJOHN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY THE AUTHOR
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1927
COPYRIGHT, 1927, BY AMERICAN NATIONAL RED CROSS
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION, BY ARTHUR W. DUNN vii
IN THE WILDERNESS (Palestine) 1
THE PIGEON MOSQUE (Turkey) 9
THE ROAD TO ARCADIA (Greece) 14
THE CHRISTMAS LANTERNS (Greece) 22
DRAGA’S ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS (Macedonia) 31
THE TRUCE (Albania) 38
THE SKANDERBEG JACKET (Albania) 45
MIRKO AND MARKO (Montenegro) 52
TODOR’S BEST CLOTHES (Bulgaria) 63
KOSSOVO DAY (North Serbia) 73
THE FAIRY RING (Roumania) 81
GREAT AMBER ROAD (Czecho-Slovakia) 92
THE LOST BROOK (Czecho-Slovakia) 109
MICHAEL MAKES UP HIS MIND (Poland) 120
ELENA’S CIAMBELLA (Italy) 130
AN EVERYDAY STORY (France) 138
ILLUSTRATIONS
THE BLUE BEAD WAS A CHARM AGAINST THE EVIL EYE _Colored Frontispiece_
WRITING FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT KNOW HOW 10
FIVE BOYS SAT MATCHING PENNIES ON THE FLOOR OF A TEMPLE 14
HE AND THE DONKEY TROTTED HOME ALONG THE SEA WALL 22
STRINGING PEPPERS 36
RUSTEM AND MARKO 42
AN ALBANIAN STORY-TELLER (_in color_) 46
ZORKA WITH HER PET PIGS 52
TODOR AND THE SQUASHES 70
PETER AND PAVLO 74
SHARED THEIR DINNER OF HOT CORN ON THE COB (_in color_) 86
BEGAN SOFTLY TO PLAY THE HILLSIDE SONG 98
RATHER SHYLY SHE OPENED THE BIG PAINTED CHEST 110
BASIL HERDING GEESE 126
HER MOTHER HAD SENT HER TO DRAW A JAR OF WATER 130
THEY HAD WAVED GOOD-BYE TO HIM (_in color_) 144
INTRODUCTION
When we go into foreign countries we eagerly look for those things
that differ from our own, and if we do not find oddities in dress,
food, buildings, and customs we are disappointed. But we are also
disappointed if we do not meet, in the people, the honesty and
kindliness that we expect from friends. We look for differences in
surroundings, but for likenesses in people. We wish to find in people
the traits that will make us feel at home among strangers in a strange
land. We wish to find friends even though they are in strange garments.
The pictures in this book were drawn with the purpose of showing
differences in externals among peoples of different nations. The
stories were written to bring home to us the likeness in heart among
the boys and girls of the world. A young Arab pommels his donkey’s
sides for joy because he is going on a holiday in Jerusalem. A girl of
Italy shares her Easter cake with a friend who has none. An orphan boy
with younger brothers and sisters dependent upon him does his very best
for them in Poland as in the United States.
If most of the pictures were made from children in poor circumstances,
or from those living in rural districts, it is because the war left the
countries of Europe greatly impoverished, and because the beautiful
old costumes and habits are rapidly passing from city life and are to
be found only in out-of-the-way places. More and more the differences
among the children of the world are vanishing, while the likenesses are
growing.
The year 1916 found Miss Upjohn, artist of child life and author
of these stories, in Europe as a volunteer relief worker. She once
remarked that the only time in her life when she had enough children
to suit her was when she was daily serving breakfast to four hundred
soldier boys in a Red Cross canteen in London. Later she served
in France with the Fraternité Américaine and with the Fund for
War Devastated Villages. While with the latter, during the German
offensive of March, 1918, she helped to evacuate villages in the
Canton of Rossières, near Montdidier, Somme. For her service in this
connection she was decorated by the French Government. But there are
memories which the author treasures even more than this--of the day,
for example, when, after two years’ absence, she went back to one of
those villages in the Somme and arrived to find the entire population
celebrating a requiem for their fallen. Slipping into the church, she
took a seat on a bench near the door, but the curé, recognizing her,
came forward from the altar and asked her to come up among them because
of all that they had been through together. ‘Such things made me feel,’
said Miss Upjohn, ‘that they regarded me as one of themselves, in
sympathy at least.’
During the stress of this time, when often the inhabitants left their
villages from one side while the opposing forces were entering from
the other, she was deeply impressed by the pluck and helpfulness
of the French children. A year later, while she was with the Red
Cross Commission in Czecho-Slovakia, the same spirit among the Czech
children, coupled with an active sympathy on their part for others in
distress, revealed to her the latent power for peace in the children
of the world, needing only the threads of contact to bring about
widespread understanding.
No wonder, then, that when, in 1920, she was asked to enter the service
of the American Junior Red Cross, she accepted. She was commissioned
first to portray child life in those European countries which had been
beneficiaries of the service of the children of America. She has since
remained continuously with this organization, traveling widely, indeed
encircling the globe, in behalf of world-wide understanding among
children. The work of her pen and brush has been an important factor
in the development of that children’s ‘league of friendship’ which now
includes in its membership ten million boys and girls in the schools of
forty nations.
The stories in this book do not tell of children’s sufferings. They
bring before our eyes the children of many nations in their everyday
surroundings, everywhere bravely and hopefully living and learning.
Some of the stories are quite true; and all of them have a kernel
of truth around which the artist-author, with the help of very real
children, has built them.
Wherever it was known that the drawings were to take some message or
story to the children of America, there was a scramble to get into the
picture. Often a poor child would refuse to take payment for posing:
‘No, no, I want to do it for _Them_!’ Perhaps a boy had received a
Christmas box or a letter; perhaps a girl had known the unfamiliar
comfort of hot food or warm shoes during the pinched days of the war;
or perhaps they had simply heard that other children of their country,
poorer than themselves, had been helped.
‘It was a stirring thing to find,’ said Miss Upjohn, ‘that even
in remote spots of the Balkans there existed an image of American
school-children as something bright, kind, and companionable. In
the heart of many a growing boy and girl in Albania or France or
Czecho-Slovakia the sympathy of American children is being repaid a
thousandfold in the golden gift of Friendship.’
ARTHUR W. DUNN
_National Director_
_American Junior Red Cross_
Friends in Strange Garments
∵
IN THE WILDERNESS
Rahmeh’s mother brought the smoking dish of mutton and cauliflower from
the clay brazier where it had been cooking over a fire of thorns, and
placed it in the middle of the rug, on a large round straw tray. Then
she laid a little flat loaf of bread at each place and clapped her
hands to call the family to their meal.
Yussef and his father came in quickly, but Rahmeh stayed outside to
feed Nib, the camel, with the cauliflower leaves that she had saved for
him.
Nib was Rahmeh’s pet, and the great awkward beast followed the little
girl about like a lamb. He was on his knees now, tied down to a peg in
the ground to prevent his wandering away. His melancholy, drooping eyes
watched the little figure coming toward him with hands full of green;
his loose gray lips trembled wistfully and his teeth slid slowly back
and forth as he moved his jaws in anticipation. Close on Rahmeh’s heels
came Jeida, her little donkey, thrusting his nose over her shoulder and
sniffing enviously at the fresh leaves which Nib tucked under his long
lips. He looked on sulkily as Rahmeh tied a blue bead to Nib’s collar
and patted his head, which felt like a mat of spongy moss. The blue
bead was a charm against the evil eye in the great city, where so many
strange and perhaps envious people might look at Nib as he threaded his
way through the crowded streets; for he was about to make a journey up
to Jerusalem with his master and Yussef.
Rahmeh and Jeida longed for a real adventure like going to Jerusalem.
Sometimes they made short trips to the orange groves of Jericho, or,
with a load of vegetables, to the British soldiers encamped on the
shore of the Dead Sea; but usually they herded sheep in the gullies.
Now Rahmeh helped her brother Yussef prepare for the journey. She
brought a long coat to put over his white cotton garment. It was
of striped black and yellow and reached to his heels; a girdle of
wine-colored wool fastened it at the waist.
‘You must take your _abyah_, too, Yussef,’ said his mother, ‘it will be
snowing, up in Jerusalem.’
Yussef, looking up at the hot, blue sky, which stretched over the
Jordan Valley, laughed incredulously. But he took the _abyah_, or
woolen cloak, from its peg, hoping that his mother might be right about
the snow. It would add another excitement to the trip.
His father was already loading Nib with sacks of fruit and nuts. From
the saddle hung beautiful bags richly woven by the children’s mother.
Into these she now stuffed bread and cheese and figs for the journey.
At last they were off over the white road that slipped away among the
folded hills, ashen gray, dun and blue, soft as the wings of a dove.
Diab, the children’s father, was a rich man. Besides the orange grove
on the Plain of Jericho, he owned large flocks of sheep and goats. In
his house were fine rugs and great bins for grain, reaching nearly to
the ceiling. The grain was poured in at the top and taken out through
a round hole near the bottom. Diab had rings of silver and of gold,
and his wife, the children’s mother, had such a weight of coins on her
headdress that it made her head ache. On ordinary days she laid it
aside and wore imitation ornaments, which were lighter. Rahmeh, too,
had a string of coins across her forehead, and chains of silver, which,
fastened to her cap in front of her ears, swung down under her chin.
Her mother had made her a little jacket of purple velvet embroidered
with orange, and her skirt was worked with bands of flowers.
That night Ismail, the big brother, said: ‘Rahmeh, you will have to go
with me to the hills to-morrow. There are too many little lambs for me
to look after them alone.’
Rahmeh was delighted. She rode her own little donkey, Jeida, and
carried a pocketful of dates and bread. Jeida was chubby and serious;
like his mistress, he went unshod, and, like her, he wore gorgeous
raiment, for his saddlebags were hung with tassels of orange and
crimson and blue. He had, too, a necklace of large blue beads, and a
silver and blue ornament was hung over his shaggy forelock for luck.
Ismail led the flock; and Rahmeh, mounted on Jeida, rounded up the
straying sheep from behind. Wherever she saw a clump of thorns thick
with Dead Sea apples, she slid from Jeida’s back and gingerly plucked
them from the prickly mass. They looked like great beads of amber. But
they were filled with pith, and, strung on a long strand of wool, would
make a magnificent necklace for Nib on his return. There was not a tree
in sight--only the pale sagebrush and the tangle of thorns and a great
waste of sandy hills dipping down to the Dead Sea, which lay in its
bowl of blue hills, a quiet, sunshiny lake with hardly a ripple. Along
the roadside, patches of salt cropped to the surface and lay on the
brown earth as white as hoar frost.
Ismail led the flock back into the hills away from the Dead Sea. He
separated the little lambs from the rest of the flock and left them
behind with Rahmeh in a hidden ravine, which ran like a streak of life
across the immense gray wilderness. Rahmeh sat tossing and counting her
lapful of Dead Sea apples, wondering whether father and Yussef had yet
reached Jerusalem, that great walled city nearly four thousand feet
above her, which to her imagination seemed to touch the sky. Was the
ground up there covered with that white mysterious thing called snow,
which never came to them in the Jordan Valley?
Suddenly over the edge of the ravine the wind swept a flock of small
quail, all whirring and chirping, and dropped them into the warm
hollow. There they lay, fluttering and bewildered, but so tame that
Rahmeh could easily have caught them. She looked up at the sky. The
wind must be blowing up there, she thought, and then she heard Ismail
calling. He was coming over the top of the hill carrying three little
long-legged black lambs, and behind him trooped the rest of the flock,
black, white, and brown, tinkling and bleating and nibbling at the
shrubs as they passed.
‘Rahmeh,’ said Ismail, ‘there’s a storm coming. You had better start
ahead on Jeida and take these three little fellows who are too weak to
walk. I can bring in the rest.’ Ismail dropped two of the lambs into
the bags attached to Jeida’s saddle and gave the third one to Rahmeh to
carry across her lap. ‘Take the Dead Sea road,’ he called after her.
Jeida chose a sheep track to the top of the ravine and from there a
stony way, like the bed of a torrent, which ran down into the valley.
He dropped nimbly from boulder to boulder until they came down to the
sand-dunes which lie about the end of the Dead Sea, now dark as slate
between its rocky shores.
The sky was heavy with gray clouds. As they came over a hill that was
like a great bare dune, Rahmeh felt Jeida suddenly quiver under her;
then snorting with terror he plunged down the hill, and, not stopping
to pick his way, made straight for the valley road. Casting a swift
glance backward, Rahmeh saw what seemed to be a large fierce dog
just over the brow of the next sand-dune. He was following them in a
crooked, skulking way, his head down, but his evil yellow eyes turned
upward. He was striped with bands of yellow across his shoulders. A
mane of coarse, bristling hair stood upright.
Rahmeh’s heart gave a great thump of fright, for she realized that this
was a hyena and that he was after the lambs; after Jeida, too, perhaps;
for though hyenas are great cowards, they do sometimes attack donkeys
and other animals that cannot fight. Jeida, sweating and trembling
and galloping wildly toward the valley road, was not more frightened
than Rahmeh. All the dark stories she had ever heard about hyenas came
back to her--that they stole lambs from the fold and babies from the
cradle; that they even stole your _mind_, until you were forced to
follow wherever they went. Rahmeh tightened her hold on the lamb in her
lap until its little round head pressed tightly against her chest, and
leaning over caught Jeida’s neckband with both hands. It is probable
that if she had not been an Arab child she would not have held on at
all. Of course if she had dropped the lamb on the road the hyena would
have stopped following, in order to devour it; but Rahmeh was too
good a shepherdess even to think of such a thing. Her one idea was to
protect and save the lamb.
Until now Jeida had kept ahead, but he was winded and trembling, and
suddenly stumbling, he came down on his knees, almost throwing Rahmeh
over his head.
At the same time the hyena, leaving the shelter of the sand-dunes,
circled about to head them off. He was very near now, humping his
shoulders in an ugly fashion, and showing his fangs. The lambs bleated
with terror.
Then, as Rahmeh shut her eyes in a spasm of fright, and Jeida,
regaining his feet, jerked backward on quivering flanks, there came
the sharp crack of a rifle, and with a yelp the hyena rolled over in a
cloud of dust.
A man in khaki came running over the dunes, rifle in hand. He was an
English soldier who, on his way to camp, had seen the peril of the
little shepherdess.
‘All right,’ he cried, ‘don’t be afraid!’ But Rahmeh and Jeida were
already fleeing toward the gray house where there were sheltering
walls, a well of cold water, and mother.
The next day Rahmeh stayed at home and strung the Dead Sea apples into
a magnificent necklace, not for big Nib, but for brave little Jeida.
THE PIGEON MOSQUE
‘If I could write like that,’ thought Omar enviously, ‘I’d send a
letter to my brother in America, telling him how I went out on the
Bosphorus in a boat and caught seven fish.’
He was watching the spectacled old Turk, who sat all day in the court
of the Pigeon Mosque, writing for those who did not know how. Omar
had been to school, where, sitting on straw mats with the other boys,
weaving his body to and fro as they recited in unison, he had learned
parts of the Koran by heart; but he had never learned to write. If the
fat merchant who was dictating to the scribe could not write his own
letters, why should Omar? And if every one knew this art, how would the
old man earn his living?
Fatima, Omar’s sister, did not worry about such things. None of the
girls whom she knew ever went to school. She sat feeding the pigeons,
glad of every day before her mother should make her hang a thick black
veil across her face when she went for water. But the big brother who
had gone to Chicago wrote home that there all the children could read
and write, even the little ones. He was shocked at Omar’s ignorance.
That was why Omar hung about the old Turk every day, watching him make
the quick little marks that meant words.
When the merchant in the red fez had paid his money and gone, Omar
ventured timidly. ‘I think I could make those letters,’ he said, ‘but I
don’t know what they mean.’
‘Boy,’ answered the Turk, ‘you must not come here to pick up crumbs
like the pigeons. If you wish to learn, I will teach you; but you must
work.’
After that, every day for months Omar might have been seen sitting on
the step at the feet of the scribe, laboriously penning quirls and dots
and dashes, and learning to form them into words. Gradually he came to
know the meaning of the texts written in white and gold on the green
and blue tiles of the mosque, and to love the place as he never had
before.
It was a pleasant school, under the sky. In the center was a beautiful
covered fountain with a tiled roof resting on white columns. The doors
of the mosque were of dull green bronze, and its walls were a blend of
ivory and apricot-tinted marbles, with rich tiles let into them. Beyond
the gateway of the court a white minaret shot toward the turquoise sky,
and an old plane tree covered with button balls harbored hundreds of
pigeons which drifted down to the court in search of food.
[Illustration: WRITING FOR THOSE WHO DID NOT KNOW HOW]
The mosque had a quaint story, too. The Sultan Bajesid, who built it to
be buried in, was a stingy man, and although he wished the mosque to
be very beautiful, the money gave out long before it was finished; so
the people of Constantinople were asked to contribute. One poor widow,
who had nothing to give but a pair of pigeons, brought them as her
offering. The Sultan was pleased, and ordered that the birds be left in
the court as an example of generosity. That was four hundred years ago,
and now the gray pigeons, descendants of the original pair, hover in
clouds about the mosque and give it its name. But though the old Sultan
was a miser, he was no coward. In token of that, when he was at last
buried in his mosque, his people placed under his arm a brick made of
the dust shaken from his garments--a sign that he had been no slacker,
but had fought in the dust of battle.
‘That was Bajesid’s idea of playing the game,’ said the scribe. ‘Now,
your battle is to learn to read and write, and you must not be a
slacker either if you use Bajesid’s mosque as a schoolhouse.’
When Omar was not learning these things from the old Turk, he was
studying the signs on the shops and the numbers on the street cars.
He had no paper or books, but he copied letters and figures on bits of
brick and plaster, and worked hard.
One day he saw a man, poorly dressed and carrying a package, looking
anxiously at the signs over the bazaars. Now and then he stopped people
to show them a written paper, but they shook their heads and hurried
on, for they could not read. Omar approached the man shyly.
‘Let me see if I can read it,’ he said. As he looked at the characters
they seemed alive, for he had studied the same words and numbers on a
signboard in another part of the city.
‘Yes, I know what it means and will take you to the place,’ said Omar.
The man was so grateful that when he delivered the package to the
merchant to whom it belonged, he said, ‘Had it not been for this boy,
who can read, I should not have found you.’
‘Ah, you can read, can you?’ said the merchant thoughtfully. ‘That is
good. If you wish a job with me I can give you one.’
Omar replied that he did not yet know enough to stop studying. ‘But,’
he added, ‘if you will employ me half a day I will study the other
half.’
‘Very well,’ said the merchant, ‘the more you know, the greater value
you will have for me.’
So at last Omar could write proudly to his brother in Chicago, ‘See!
I have begun, and now I do not intend to let those American boys get
ahead of me!’
THE ROAD TO ARCADIA
Five boys sat matching pennies on the floor of a temple--the ruined
temple of Hera in the ancient Greek city of Olympia. They were little
boys, all in short trousers, and Theo and Alexander in the long-sleeved
blue aprons worn by boys in the primary grades of school. Spiro and
Andreas, a little older, wore brown woolen capes and little caps with
tassels. Adoni, the oldest, had finished the primary school and wore a
_fustanella_, that is, a full white kilt, which stood out like a ballet
dancer’s skirt. On his shoes were black pompons like his father’s.
The ruined temple was a favorite place to play, for the boys were very
proud of the fact that it was one of the famous spots of the earth.
Among the blackberry vines and the daisies, great blocks of marble
lay about, like fallen checker towers on a carpet. The boys knew the
stories about the wilderness of buildings, which were now marked only
by foundation lines or rows of broken columns. Here the great Olympic
Games had been begun more than two thousand years ago--the games that
have been revived in our time, and in which it is such an honor to take
part. To these boys the olden games seemed very real and the ancient
place very living.
[Illustration: FIVE BOYS SAT MATCHING PENNIES ON THE FLOOR OF A TEMPLE]
Tired of matching pennies, they took off their shoes and sprang to a
paved spot near by, where they began to wrestle. In the gymnasium that
had once stood here, the Olympic athletes had begun their training. The
pavement of tile was grooved, to keep the wrestlers from slipping, and
as the five boys tussled, their bare feet gripped the friendly tiles.
When they stopped their play, out of breath, Theo caught sight of the
figure of a stranger, and all of them turned to look, abashed. From
where they stood they could not tell whether it was that of a man or
a woman, for the person sat low in the grass. A gray coat collar was
turned up to the ears and a black cap pulled down, against a keen
breeze that set the delicate iris aquiver and rippled the daisies on
their stems.
The boys stood for a moment full of curiosity, then began to jump
forward from stone to stone, pretending to look for blackberries, but
really closing in on the stranger. When they came near they saw that
it was a woman, and that a paint box lay open at her side. She looked
up and smiled, and a sigh of relief went up from the boys. She was not
going to drive them away. Instead, she held out her hand and said ‘Good
day’ in their own tongue. This greeting appeared to be all the Greek
that she knew, so the boys could only smile back at her and shake hands.
They would have liked to talk to her and tell her the stories about the
ruins. They pointed to a fallen archway to show her the entrance to the
famous stadium where races had taken place--a stretch of level ground
now covered with wheat fields and olive trees, beneath which lay the
great race course where the chariots had whirled and the spot where the
victors had received their olive branches.
In the old days there had been no money prizes and no decorations. No
professional runners or boxers or wrestlers were allowed to take part
in the Olympic Games. It was a fair contest, for all the players had
the same training, ten months in the gymnasium where the boys had just
been wrestling. July was the month for the Games; and no matter what
quarrels or wars there might be between the states of Greece, during
that month they were forgotten. Peace was sworn, and all Greeks came
together as brothers. It was not only the Greeks who gathered; people
from other countries were welcomed, too, for in Olympia the word
‘stranger’ was sacred. To harm or cheat a guest was the meanest of
crimes.
The five boys stood around the artist, and their courteous bearing
seemed to show that they kept to the great tradition of the Games.
Adoni jerked his head back scornfully and pointed to a row of large
stones near by. On those blocks had once stood statues called _zanes_,
paid for by the fines of contestants who had not ‘played the game.’
The largest one perpetuated the shame of a boy who had run away the
night before the race in which he was to take part, because he had been
afraid of failing. That was more than fifteen hundred years ago! The
artist nodded and said ‘Zanes!’ and the boys knew that she understood.
They drew closer to watch her as she sketched. Along the road to
Arcadia, on the embankment above them, a broken line of people, on foot
and on donkey-back, were passing on their way home from market. It made
a bright moving picture in the sunlight, but it was not easy to paint.
Before one donkey was finished, another had trotted into his place in
the picture. The boys laughed when the waggly ears of one donkey were
placed on another one that had passed out of sight. Orange and black
saddlebags took the place of a wooden saddle that had been hung with
bunches of onions and carrots; and one woman was painted with another
woman’s baby.
Quite as fascinating were the materials with which the artist
worked--sticks of charcoal, a soft eraser, which could be squeezed like
putty between the fingers, and a box full of tiny porcelain dishes
filled with bright colors, besides tubes from which soft paint could be
pressed on a tin plate and mixed with water. The box lay on the grass
close by the artist’s knee, and the boys longed to look it over, but
were too shy and too well-bred to touch the things.
Andreas, looking up from watching this diverting business, spied
two older boys coming toward their group. Uneasily the younger boys
recognized Petro Negroponte, who was always bullying them on the school
playground and elsewhere. The big boys lounged onto the scene and stood
staring, their hands in their pockets. To show that they were not
impressed by what was going on, they began to make scornful remarks,
at which the little boys grinned nervously, hoping that after all they
might be allowed to stay.
But Petro had no intention of letting them enjoy themselves. ‘Here, get
out of this, you!’ he said roughly. As the five stood irresolute, he
raised his arm threateningly.
‘Go!’ he commanded.
Reluctantly the little boys turned away and began to play leap-frog
in an open space where once had stood an altar to the great god Zeus.
Looking back wistfully, they saw something that made them stop their
game in horror.
The big boys, too, had moved away. One of them was halfway up the
embankment, but Petro Negroponte had slipped behind the tree under
which the artist sat. Suddenly his hand shot out, and the next instant
he and his pal were dashing up the embankment and along the road to
Arcadia.
‘My paint box!’ cried the artist, springing to her feet. She spoke in
English, but the little boys understood. Their own particular stranger
had appealed to them for help! Forgetting their fear, they started in
full cry after the thieves.
Along the stony road to Arcadia they ran, the artist panting far
behind. Shepherds waved to show which direction the fugitives had
taken. Men in the field shouted encouragement, but no one joined the
chase.
What the boys feared, happened. Petro and his companion made for a
thick wood on a cliff above the road. There, rocks and brush made
pursuit almost impossible. With thumping hearts and dry throats, the
little boys scrambled up the steep incline and out of sight of the
artist on the road below.
It was a long half-hour before they came sliding down the hill, dusty
and sweating. Andreas carried the paint box, but it was empty. All of
the boys were silent and ashamed, because they had failed, but, most
of all, because a Greek boy had betrayed a stranger. There were still
_zanes_ in Olympia!
The sun was dropping low. It touched the sheep in the meadows, rimming
each one of them with silver. The road to Arcadia still lay in
sunshine, and over it the little procession turned back.
Suddenly Spiro pounced on something lying in a rut--a stick of
charcoal! Instantly five pairs of eyes sharpened, searching the edges
of the road. Patiently they went over the course step by step, and
shouts of triumph punctured the twilight when a lead pencil or a tube
of paint was found among the rocks. At the top of the embankment, where
Petro had stumbled over a pine root, they found the most. The box had
slipped and, having no cover, many of the paints had dropped from it.
Eagerly the boys gathered the lost tubes. Not the very smallest piece
of charcoal was withheld, not even the fascinating lump of rubber which
trembled in Alexander’s grimy little hand, nor the empty porcelain
pans which Adoni picked out of the moss. At the end of the search, a
handful of odds and ends had been gathered, precious little bits of red
and yellow and green saved from the wreck.
Then, since words meant little between them and their stranger, boys
and artist smiled at each other in the dusk, in perfect understanding
as they all shook hands again.
The honor of Olympia was clear when the wind and the sun went down at
the end of the valley.
THE CHRISTMAS LANTERNS
Nikola usually began his day by fetching two jars of fresh water for
his mother. He filled them at the public fountain, loaded them on his
donkey, and then he and the donkey trotted home along the sea wall.
Nikola lived in a village of stone, which led up the side of a cliff
to a plateau of rocks and thistles. Ages ago the sea had raged through
here and had worn big caves in the cliff. In some of these caves people
lived, having made them into houses by building walls in front of them,
with windows and a door, and sufficient roof to hold a chimney, which
was really nothing more than a big water jug the bottom of which had
been broken out. Up the stone stairs, which served as a street, women
toiled daily with similar jars on their shoulders. If they were tired,
all they had to do was to sit down and rest on the flat roof of a house.
Over these steps Nikola skipped one hot winter’s morning to lead out
his little flock of sheep, penned in a cave higher up. What a place
of stones and thistle it was! But farther back from the sea there was
more grass, and thither Nikola guided his flock. From below they were
plainly visible against the dark sky.
[Illustration: HE AND THE DONKEY TROTTED HOME ALONG THE SEA WALL]
A boy coming along the road saw them and smiled craftily. ‘I’ll get
ahead of that fellow,’ he said to himself. It was Philippu, coming
from the town with a roll of colored tissue paper in his hand. Nikola
on the hilltop, unmindful of Philippu’s presence, stretched himself
vigorously, flinging out his arms against the sky. One arm pointed
toward Mount Ida, where the Greek god Zeus was born, the other toward
Mount Jukta where he died. But that meant nothing to Nikola. He was
so used to the glorious mountains that he paid no attention to them.
He sat down and considered what could be done about the holidays. The
Greeks have a different calendar from ours, so that Christmas and New
Year’s come thirteen days later with them than with us. Consequently
it was a day in early January When Nikola was thus making plans for
Christmas.
It is the custom in Greece for boys to go about from house to house,
singing carols on Christmas and New Year’s Eve just as the waits do
in England. They carry lanterns, usually fancy ones, which they make
themselves in order to show that they have taken pains to attract and
please and are not begging. Rather, they are carrying a little portable
show, and they sing so lustily that people are either pleased to hear
them or glad to pay them a few pennies to move on.
Nikola had learned to his disgust that Philippu, besides making a
bagpipe from a sheep’s bladder, was planning a large lantern in the
shape of a boat. This was just what Nikola himself had thought to do,
and for which he had already made a rough drawing from a ship going to
Alexandria, which had lain off the harbor for a day. But now there was
nothing left for him but to make a lantern in the form of a house. Or
should it be a church, with two towers and a dome?
In his heart Nikola felt that he would make a failure of the dome.
So after all it must be a house. But he would make a very large one
indeed, and put five or six candle ends in it. A green house with red
windows and a big yellow door! Over the door he would put a flagpole
and hang out the Greek flag, a white cross on a blue ground. Superb! He
rolled on his back for joy, his feet high in the air. His thick brown
_burnous_ kept the thistles from pricking his back.
And then what should he buy with all the money he would earn? As
he thought it over he seemed to have few needs. Goat’s milk in the
morning, plenty of olives with his bread at noon, and at night a dish
of hot greens with oil and the juice of a lemon poured over them. What
more could one wish?
On the whole a cake for his mother, such as was customary at this
time, brown and drenched with honey and studded with nuts and candied
fruits, would be the best. He fondly hoped that it might be big enough
for the whole family.
Nikola had a few coppers, which he had earned by carrying luggage down
to the dock, and with these he proposed to buy tissue paper to cover
the framework of his house. The next day, with a bundle of sticks, some
glue and strings, he repaired to a windless cave and there began the
fabrication of the wonderful lantern, while the sheep browsed among the
rocks outside. The size and magnificence of his project Nikola kept
secret, hoping to stun Philippu with it on the final night. But as he
worked, he thought with envious concern that Philippu had not only his
bagpipe with which to win fame and wealth, but the boat, too.
However, one cannot pipe and chant at the same time, and Philippu must
find someone else to do his singing for him. Nikola had a good voice.
He sang in the choir and knew the fine old carols. This was a great
advantage over the boys who had only jazz to fall back on.
Philippu and Nikola were in reality good friends. It was only the
competition in the matter of lanterns that had brought a sharp rivalry
between them. They lived just outside the town of Candia on the
Island of Crete. The town was surrounded by great walls, built by
the Venetians when they were masters of the island centuries ago.
Inside the walls were modern shops and hotels and market-places. A big
restaurant, a few small ones and many coffee-houses were the hope of
the boys.
Secretly each of them reconnoitered the field before the great night,
and each decided that about half-past seven would be the most favorable
time to sing before the big restaurant. It would be a mistake to go too
early, for then the place would not be full; but if it was too late
people would have parted with all their small change.
Accordingly, soon after dark on Christmas Eve, Nikola set forth with
his wonderful house. His mother had given him four good candle ends,
and he had two more in his pocket when these should have given out. He
lighted his lantern before leaving home, in order that his parents and
Daphne might see it, and then proceeded triumphantly down the road,
carrying the brilliant fabrication in both arms, with an admiring
retinue of small boys following.
When they reached the top of the town wall their pride met a check.
Philippu had gone ahead in the dark, his lantern unlit; but here,
before entering the town, he had stopped to light the candles; and now
he stood with the wonderful ship in his arms, his bagpipe hung round
his neck by a string. He was waiting for his singer, who was late.
The ship was a marvel. The boys gaped at it in amazement. It had four
smokestacks and an imposing double row of portholes. On either side of
the bows blazed the name ‘Hellas’ in letters of fire, and the rigging
was thickly festooned with tiny pennants of many nations. Nikola’s
house was bigger and brighter, but the ship was an artistic triumph.
‘Hello!’ said Philippu coolly; ‘made a house, did you?’ There was
something patronizing in his tone that irritated Nikola. Besides,
the fickle crowd was pressing around Philippu’s boat in unfeigned
admiration, and Nikola decided to move on before they all left him.
‘That’s a fine ship,’ he said carelessly. ‘Well, come on, boys; we’ll
hurry up to the restaurant.’
‘Second turn for you,’ cried Philippu hotly. ‘I got here first!’
‘But you’re not ready, and I am,’ retorted Nikola. ‘Come on, boys.’
In dismay Philippu saw his rivals rushing past him, and though still
without a singer he joined in the race for the best position. But
he moved too swiftly. A wind-blown tongue of flame licked at the
ship’s rigging and instantly the Christmas lantern shot up in a blaze.
Despairingly Philippu flung it from him. The masterpiece fell to the
ground, where it blazed and curled and blackened and went up in smoke.
With a cry of rage Philippu sprang at Nikola; but Nikola had foreseen
this and had set his house on the wall. He met Philippu halfway and
caught him by the wrists. Both were muscular boys, and for a moment
they rocked back and forth, grinding their teeth, while the small boys
cheered for joy.
‘Stop! Stop!’ shouted Nikola above the noise, still holding Philippu by
the wrists. ‘I didn’t hit you and I’m sorry your boat is burned. But
you’ve still got your bagpipe. You play and I’ll sing. We’ll go halves.’
Philippu knew that the proposition was a generous one, considering that
Nikola now had the field to himself and could make a good thing of
it. There would be other bands of singers, of course, but they would
probably carry Chinese lanterns and it was not likely that anyone could
outdo Nikola’s house and his fine voice. He dropped his arms and stood
back panting.
‘All right,’ he said at last, ‘and next week I’ll make another
stunner.’ He bent over the wreck of the ‘Hellas’ and extricated the
candle ends from the smouldering rubbish. They would serve another day.
So Philippu really gathered himself together finely after his disaster,
though he could not restrain a groan as he turned away from the ruin of
his masterpiece.
Outside the restaurant the boys looked the field over carefully, before
beginning their campaign. Through the lighted windows they could see
that the large room was nearly full of people eating. Philippu tested
his bagpipe and Nikola looked well to his candles, that none of them
should topple over. Then they engaged a small boy who had a pair of
copper cymbals to clap for them, promising him five cents from their
earnings. Thus they had the rudiments of a brass band. Nikola set the
illuminated house on the sill of the restaurant window where it made
a magnificent showing in the dark street. Then he opened the door a
hand’s breadth and the concert began. Strong and clear the young voice
rang out in the night. Philippu piped and the small partner clashed
his cymbals with terrific energy. People stopped eating to listen, and
every one craned to get a look at the glowing house in the window. At
last Nikola with a flushed face and beating heart advanced into the
restaurant with a little saucer, which he had slipped into his pocket
from his mother’s cupboard. He had not thought that he should mind so
much. But as he went from table to table and people dropped pennies
smilingly into his plate, he forgot his shyness and thanked everybody
joyfully, not trying to conceal his delight and surprise.
Outside, the boys counted their gains by the light of the Christmas
lantern. Over three _drachmas_ had come to them from their first
attack. Up the street they went to further triumphs, followed by an
ever-increasing train of admirers.
At last, all their candles burned, they sat down on the edge of the old
fountain in the square, and again took stock. Nine _drachmas_ and sixty
_lepta_, after the cymbalist had been paid! Visions of cake now became
possibilities. Rushing to the still open cake shop, they sang and piped
lustily to the baker, and then throwing their coins on the counter
ordered the best cake they could get for their money.
That is how it happened that on Christmas Day the members both of
Nikola’s and of Philippu’s families ate their fill of sticky brown
cake, thick with plums and almonds, with figs and dates and currants,
all trickling with honey.
DRAGA’S ENTRANCE EXAMINATIONS
One evening Draga and her brother Dushan squatted on the kitchen floor,
eating their supper of stewed peppers smothered in clabbered milk,
while their mother prepared the thick, sweet Turkish coffee over a
stone brazier. Above them spread the hearth-hood, dark and velvety as a
bat’s wing. Wisps of blue smoke from their father’s pipe floated toward
it.
Of late many exciting things had happened. Father had come back from
America with new clothes, a new language, and new ideas. Now the family
sat silent in the grip of a great decision.
Dushan and Draga were to go to the American school in Monastir to
learn English and other things not taught in their village. Father had
been to town to make arrangements, and, since Dushan and Draga could
show good reports from their home school, they were to be admitted on
trial, Dushan to live with friends and attend as a day pupil, Draga to
live in the dormitory as a boarder. Mother acquiesced bewildered, but
her dark eyes lingered on Draga, who was her baby. She listened with
considerable distrust to the tales of American women who went where and
when they liked--tales even of girls who went to and from school alone
on street cars, carrying their books under their arms!
The preparations were finished. They were to start the next morning.
It would be a three days’ journey in the ox-cart, and provisions stood
ready in the shape of baskets of grapes and cheese, and a great loaf
of brown bread, almost as big as a cart-wheel, wrapped in clean linen.
The heavy white tunics with their flowered borders were folded between
home-woven blankets.
After coffee, taking two baskets, Draga went to the stream which
bounded down toward Lake Prespa, to gather succulent leaves and grass
for the goats. The village houses were deep ochre in color, some with
jutting windows faced with turquoise blue. Above the walls which shut
the gardens from the street rose cypresses and matted vines and the
wide tops of fig trees. Scarped blue mountains climbed behind the
village, and below it lay Lake Prespa, holding in its bright waters a
tiny island on which could be seen the ruins of a tower where long ago
the Bulgarian Tsars had hidden their treasure from the Greek Emperors
of Constantinople. That was before the time of the Serbian Tsars who
conquered Macedonia, or the Turks who took it from the Serbs.
In this country Alexander the Great had lived as a boy, and since then
it had known so many masters and was still claimed by so many nations
that people continued to live in fortress-like houses whose doors were
barred at night with heavy stanchions.
Draga’s home was one of these houses. All its doors and windows opened
on the inner court. On the ground floor were stalled the oxen, the
hens, and the goats. Above the stables projected a wide veranda hung
with gay Serbian rugs and strings of tobacco and beans. Below, in the
open space of the court, was piled husked corn, which glowed like a
heap of gold when the sun struck it.
Draga’s thoughts rushed back to the familiar scene the next day, as the
ox-cart creaked through the sere and dusty country, over a road that
had once been a great Roman thoroughfare. It was really a continuation
of the famous Appian Way from Rome to Brindisi. There it disappeared in
the Adriatic, to emerge on the other side at Durazzo, in Albania, where
it took another name, of Via Egnatia, and continued across country to
Salonica. Monastir, where Draga and Dushan were to go to school, was
the halfway station. The old Roman road was still the great highway,
but the merchant caravans and the trampling legions had disappeared.
Military trucks, white with dust, sometimes lumbered by, carrying
stores to some outlying garrison, and the mail car was sure to be met
sooner or later jacking up its wheels for new tires. For the most part,
people went by on foot or on donkey-back, all burden-laden.
There were brigands back in the hills. Sometimes they disguised
themselves as Turkish women, with long, black veils over their faces,
and flowing garments, which concealed weapons; but persons traveling
in an ox-cart driven by a barefooted boy had nothing to fear.
Nevertheless, they spent the nights near some small village that looked
like an outcrop of stones on the hillside, and after coffee and sour
milk at the inn, stretched themselves out on the floor of the wagon and
pulled the blankets over them.
On the third day they came to Monastir--to Draga and Dushan a
bewildering, beautiful place. The next day was market day, and their
mother could go back in company with friends. So, on the threshold of
the school, with many hurried embraces, she left Draga, who felt small
and alone in spite of the crowd of new faces around her.
A month went by and the first examinations were over.
Draga’s parents were to come that day to learn whether or not she
had passed. Draga did not know and was afraid to ask. One moment she
trembled with hope that she had not passed, so that she might travel
back in the ox-cart with her parents to the golden-lighted court,
the shadowy kitchen, and the sweet, musty smell of grapes. Then she
shriveled with shame at the thought of failure. Besides, she was
beginning to love the school life; the fresh clean dormitory, where
they slept with open windows; the team work of study and play; and the
evening hour, when they all sat on the floor and told stories before
going to bed. Also, she had learned with surprise that Bulgarian girls
are as kindly as Serbians. There were several in the school, and one of
them, Boiana, had been her friend from the start. This seemed strange,
for she had always heard that Bulgars were evil and hostile people.
Fearing that her mother might find her strange because of her bobbed
hair and straight gingham dress, Draga put on her Macedonian garments.
The embroidery on her tunic was of an ancient pattern called ‘Marko,
the King’s Son,’ so named in honor of the Serbian prince, Marko, the
national hero of chivalry and romance, who had lost a crown rather than
tell a lie. His home had been in Macedonia over five hundred years
before Draga’s time, but ‘Marko’s pattern’ had been handed down from
one generation of Serbian women to another, each proud to wear it, as
Draga was to-day. The sleeveless jacket which she wore over her tunic
was of a clear red, like the peppers strung against the white walls of
her home; and wound around her waist was a rope of black wool to keep
her brilliant girdle in place.
Behind the school playground there was a high brick wall with a small
green door. It led into a quiet, neglected garden like a scene from a
book. There was a well in the center; gourds and spiked flowers, purple
and white, grew in the rank grass, and crooked plum trees traced blue
shadows on the walls which shut the garden away from the clatter of the
streets. This was the paradise of a large family of rabbits, and when
Draga felt homesick she slipped away to feed them with scraps of red
peppers, which she begged from the cook; for all Macedonians down to
the rabbits love peppers.