Moni the Goat Boy, and Other Stories

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Moni the Goat Boy and Other Stories, by Johanna Spyri, Translated by Edith F. Kunz

Copyright, 1906 By EDITH F. KUNZ
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 614.3
The Athenæum Press GINN & COMPANY · PROPRIETORS · BOSTON · U.S.A.
Outside of the province of the Märchen, which constitutes so rich a field in German literature, there is no writer better known or better loved in the young German-speaking world than Johanna Spyri. Her stories, written for children and those who love children, are read and reread as something that never grows old. The secret of this charm lies, above all, in the author's genuine love of children, as shown in her sympathetic insight into the joys, the hopes, and the longings of childhood, and in her skillful selection of characteristic details, which creates an atmosphere of reality that is rare in books written for children.
Johanna Heusser Spyri was born in the little Swiss town of Hirzel, canton of Zürich, in 1827, and died in Zürich in 1901. She wrote especially for young people, her writings dealing mostly with Swiss mountain life and portraying the thrifty, industrious nature of the people. The stories are sometimes sad,—for the peasant's life is full of hardships,—but through them all a fresh mountain breeze is blowing and a play of sunlight illumines the high Alps.


MONI THE GOAT BOY
The baths of Fideris lie halfway up the mountain side, overlooking the long valley of the Prättigau. After you leave the highway and climb a long, steep ascent, you come first upon the village of Fideris, with its pleasant green slopes. Then, ascending still higher into the mountains, you at length come upon the lonely hotel building in the midst of rocky cliffs and fir trees. Here the region would indeed be rather dreary looking were it not for the bright little mountain flowers that shine forth everywhere from the low grass.
One pleasant summer evening two ladies stepped out from the hotel and ascended the narrow footpath that runs up steeply from the house to the rugged cliffs above. On reaching the first peak the visitors stopped and looked about, for they had but recently come to the resort.