The Birch and the Star, and Other Stories

The cover image was restored by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
Copyright, 1915 BY ROW, PETERSON & COMPANY
The realistic stories in this book, given for the first time to American children, were written in the Norwegian by Jörgen Moe and in the Swedish by Zacharias Topelius. Both authors have won fame in their native lands as writers of juvenile literature. Their works show sincere sympathy with child life and great power to interpret it artistically.
Children need the realistic story side by side with the purely imaginative fairy tale, for the story true to human experience serves to bring about a proper balance between the ideas created by a world of fancy and those of the world of reality.
The standard of literary merit is the same for both kinds of stories. Both must influence the child's life subtly and indirectly, not by moralizing or preaching.
Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen.
... the gentleman stopped out of his carriage (took Bikku by the hand)

About two hundred years ago Finland had suffered greatly. There had been war; cities were burned, the harvest destroyed and thousands of people had died; some had perished by the sword, others from hunger, many from dreadful diseases. There was nothing left but tears and want, ashes and ruins.
Then it happened that many families became separated; some were captured and carried away by the enemy, others fled to the forests and desert places or far away to Sweden. A wife knew nothing about her husband, a brother nothing about his sister, and a father and mother did not know whether their children were living or dead. Some fugitives came back and when they found their dear ones, there was such joy that it seemed as if there had been no war, no sorrow. Then the huts were raised from the ashes, the fields again turned yellow with golden harvest. A new life began for the country.
During the time of the war a brother and sister were carried far away to a foreign land. Here they found friendly people who took care of them. Year after year passed and the children grew and suffered no want. But even in their comfort and ease they could not forget their father, mother and native country.