[Illustration]
I want you to look at the picture on this page. It is a little deer:
its name is the chamois. Do you see what delicate horns it has, and
what slender legs, and how it seems to stand on that bit of rock and
lift its head to watch for the hunters.
Last summer I saw a little chamois like that, and just as small: it
was not alive, but cut or carved of wood,--such a graceful pretty
little plaything as one does not meet every day.
Would you like to know who made it, and where it came from?
It was made in the mountain country, by the brother of my good
Jeannette, the little Swiss maiden.
Here among the high mountains she lives with her father, mother, and
brothers; and far up among those high snowy peaks, which are seen
behind the house, the chamois live, many of them together, eating
the tender grass and little pink-colored flowers, and leaping and
springing away over the ice and snow when they see the men coming up
to hunt them.
I will tell you by and by how it happened that Jeannette's tall
brother Joseph carved this tiny chamois from wood. But first you must
know about this small house upon the great hills, and how they live up
there so near the blue sky.
One would think it might be easier for a child to be good and pure so
far up among the quiet hills, and that there God would seem to come
close to the spirit, even of a little girl or boy.
On the sides of the mountains tall trees are growing,--pine and fir
trees, which are green in winter as well as in summer. If you go into
the woods in winter, you will find that almost all the trees have
dropped their pretty green leaves upon the ground, and are standing
cold and naked in the winter wind; but the pines and the firs keep on
their warm green clothes all the year round.
It was many years ago, before Jeannette was born, that her father
came to the mountains with his sharp axe and cut down some of the
fir-trees. Other men helped him, and they cut the great trees into
strong logs and boards, and built of them the house of which I have
told you. Now he will have a good home of his own for as long as he
likes to live there, and to it will come his wife and children as God
shall send them, to nestle among the hills.
Then he went down to the little town at the foot of the mountain, and
when he came back, he was leading a brown, long-eared donkey, and upon
that donkey sat a rosy-cheeked young woman, with smiling brown eyes,
and long braids of brown hair hanging below a little green hat set on
one side of her head, while beautiful rose-colored carnations peeped
from beneath it on the other side. Who was this? It wasn't Jeannette:
you know I told you this was before she was born. Can you guess, or
must I tell you that it was the little girl's mother? She had come up
the mountain for the first time to her new home,--the house built of
the fir and the pine,--where after awhile were born Jeannette's two
tall brothers, and at last Jeannette herself.
It was a good place to be born in. When she was a baby she used to lie
on the short, sweet grass before the doorstep, and watch the cows
and the goats feeding, and clap her little hands to see how rosy the
sunset made the snow that shone on the tops of those high peaks. And
the next summer, when she could run alone, she picked the blue-eyed
gentians, thrusting her small fingers between their fringed eyelids,
and begging them to open and look at little Jean; and she stained her
wee hands among the strawberries, and pricked them with the thorns
of the long raspberry-vines, when she went with her mother in the
afternoon to pick the sweet fruit for supper. Ah, she was a happy
little thing! Many a fall she got over the stones or among the brown
moss, and many a time the clean frock that she wore was dyed red with
the crushed berries; but, oh, how pleasant it was to find them in
great patches on the mountain-side, where the kind sun had warmed them
into such delicious life! I have seen the children run out of school
to pick such sweet wild strawberries, all the recess-time, up in the
fields of Maine; and how happy they were with their little stained
fingers as they came back at the call of the bell!
In the black bog-mud grew the Alpen roses, and her mother said, "Do
not go there, my little daughter, it is too muddy for you." But at
night, when her brother came home from the chamois hunt, he took off
his tall, pointed hat, and showed his little sister the long spray of
roses twisted round it, which he had brought for her. He could go in
the mud with his thick boots, you know, and never mind it.
Here they live alone upon the mountain; there are no near neighbors.
At evening they can see the blue smoke curling from the chimney of one
house that stands behind that sunny green slope, a hundred yards from
their door, and they can always look down upon the many houses of the
town below, where the mother lived when she was young.
Many times has Jeannette wondered how the people lived down there,--so
many together; and where their cows could feed, and whether there were
any little girls like herself, and if they picked berries, and had
such a dear old black nanny-goat as hers, that gave milk for her
supper, and now had two little black kids, its babies. She didn't know
about those little children in Maine, and that they have little
kids and goats, as well as sweet red berries, to make the days pass
happily.
She wanted to go down and see, some day, and her father promised that,
when she was a great girl, she should go down with him on market-days,
to sell the goats'-milk cheeses and the sweet butter that her mother
made.
When the cows and goats have eaten all the grass near the house, her
father drives them before him up farther among the mountains, where
more grass is growing, and there he stays with them many weeks: he
does not even come home at night, but sleeps in a small hut among the
rocks, where, too, he keeps the large clean milk-pails, and the little
one-legged stool upon which he sits at morning and night to milk the
cows and goats.
When the pails are full, the butter is to be made, and the cheese; and
he works while the animals feed. The cows have little bells tied to
their necks, that he may hear and find them should they stray too far.
Many times, when he is away, does his little daughter at home listen,
listen, while she sits before the door, to hear the distant tinkling
of the cow-bells. She is a loving little daughter, and she thinks of
her father so far away alone, and wishes he was coming home to eat
some of the sweet strawberries and cream for supper.
Last summer some travellers came to the house. They stopped at the
door and asked for milk; the mother brought them brimming bowlsful,
and the shy little girl crept up behind her mother with her birch-bark
baskets of berries. The gentlemen took them and thanked her, and one
told of his own little Mary at home, far away over the great sea.
Jeannette often thinks of her, and wonders whether her papa has gone
home to her.
While the gentlemen talked, Jeannette's brother Joseph sat upon the
broad stone doorstep and listened. Presently one gentleman, turning
to him, asked if he would come with them over the mountain to lead the
way, for there are many wild places and high, steep rocks, and they
feared to get lost.
Joseph sprang up from his low seat and said he would go, brought his
tall hat and his mountain-staff, like a long, strong cane, with a
sharp iron at the end, which he can stick into the snow or ice if
there is danger of slipping; and they went merrily on their way, over
the green grass, over the rocks, far up among the snow and ice, and
the frozen streams and rivers that pour down the mountain-sides.
Joseph was brave and gay; he led the way, singing aloud until the
echoes answered from every hillside. It makes one happy to sing, and
when we are busy and happy we sing without thinking of it, as the
birds do. When everything is bright and beautiful in nature around
us, we feel like singing aloud and praising God, who made the earth so
beautiful; then the earth also seems to sing of God who made it,
and the echo seems like its answer of praise. Did you ever hear the
echo,--the voice that seems to come from a hill or a house far away,
repeating whatever you may say? Among the mountains the echoes answer
each other again and again. Jeannette has often heard them.
That night, while the mother and her little girl were eating their
supper, the gentlemen came back again, bringing Joseph with them. He
could not walk now, nor spring from rock to rock with his Alpen staff;
he had fallen and broken his leg, and he must lie still for many days.
But he could keep a cheerful face, and still sing his merry songs; and
as he grew better, and could sit out again on the broad bench beside
the door, he took his knife and pieces of fine wood, and carved
beautiful things,--first a spoon for his little sister, with gentians
on the handle; then a nice bowl, with a pretty strawberry-vine carved
all about the edge. And from this bowl, and with this spoon, she ate
her supper every night,--sweet milk, with the dry cakes of rye bread
broken into it, and sometimes the red strawberries. I know his little
sister loved him dearly, and thanked him in her heart every time she
used the pretty things. How dearly a sister and brother can love each
other!
Then he made other things,--knives, forks, and plates; and at last
one day he sharpened his knife very sharp, chose a very nice, delicate
piece of wood, and carved this beautiful chamois, just like a living
one, only so small. My cousin, who was travelling there, bought it and
brought it home.
When the summer had passed, the father came down from the high
pastures; the butter and cheese making was over, and the autumn work
was now to be done. Do you want to know what the autumn work was, and
how Jeannette could help about it? I will tell you. You must know that
a little way down the mountain-side is a grove of chestnut-trees. Did
you ever see the chestnut-trees? They grow in our woods, and on
the shores of some ponds. In the spring they are covered with long,
yellowish blossoms, and all through the hot summer those blossoms are
at work, turning into sweet chestnuts, wrapped safely in round, thorny
balls, which will prick your fingers sadly if you don't take care. But
when the frost of the autumn nights comes, it cracks open the prickly
ball and shows a shining brown nut inside; then, if we are careful,
we may pull off the covering and take out the nut. Sometimes, indeed,
there are two, three, or four nuts in one shell; I have found them so
myself.
Now the autumn work, which I said I would tell you about, is to gather
these chestnuts and store them away,--some to be eaten, boiled or
roasted, by the bright fire in the cold winter days that are coming;
and some to be nicely packed in great bags, and carried on the donkey
down to the town to be sold. The boys of New England, too, know what
good fun it is to gather nuts in the fall, and spread them over the
garret floor to dry, and at last to crack and eat them by the winter
hearth. So when the father says one night at supper-time, "It is
growing cold; I think there will be a frost to-night," Jeannette knows
very well what to do; and she dances away right early in the evening
to her little bed, which is made in a wooden box built up against the
side of the wall, and falls asleep to dream about the chestnut woods,
and the squirrels, and the little brook that leaps and springs from
rock to rock down under the tall, dark trees.
She has gone to bed early, that she may wake with the first daylight,
and she is out of bed in a minute when she hears her father's cheerful
call in the morning, "Come, children, it is time to be off."
Their dinner is packed in a large basket. The donkey stands ready
before the door, with great empty bags hanging at each side, and they
go merrily over the crisp white frost to the chestnut-trees. How the
frost has opened the burrs! He has done more than half their work for
them already. How they laugh and sing and shout to each other as they
gather the smooth brown nuts, filling their baskets, and running to
pour them into the great bags! It is merry autumn work. The sun looks
down upon them through the yellow leaves, and the rocks give them
mossy seats; while here and there comes a bird or a squirrel to see
what these strange people are doing in their woods.
Jeannette declares that the chestnut days are the best in the year.
Perhaps she is right. I am sure I should enjoy them, shouldn't you?
She really helps, although she is but a little girl, and her father
says at night that his little Jean is a dear, good child. It makes
her very happy. She thinks of what he has said while she undresses at
night, unbraiding her hair and unlacing her little blue bodice with
its great white sleeves, and she goes peacefully to sleep, to dream
again of the merry autumn days. And while she dreams good angels must
be near her, for she said her sweet and reverent prayer on her knees,
with a full and thankful heart to the All-Father who gave her so many
blessings.
She is our little mountain sister. The mountain life is a fresh and
happy one. I should like to stay with this little sister a long, long
time.