III.
| August | mittens | trousers | sleigh |
| steamed | northern | language | sledge |
When the people of that land heard that there was a white baby in the small black house, they came hundreds of miles to see the little stranger.
They talked to the baby in their own queer language. They called her the Snow Baby, and they brought her presents of fur mittens and little sealskin boots.
After the sun went away the baby lived for days and weeks in a little room lined with blankets. A lamp was kept burning in the room all the time, both day and night.
One of the Eskimo women made a little suit of clothes for the baby, all out of furs. There were only two pieces in this suit. First there was a pair of little trousers and boots made together. Over this a hooded coat was worn.
When the sun returned, the Snow Baby was taken out of doors every day. No matter how cold it was she had a sleigh ride on her little Eskimo sledge. You should have seen her team of dogs with their bright eyes, their sharp-pointed ears, and their big bushy tails.
For nearly a year the Snow Baby lived in this strange, northern home. But one day in August a big black ship came up the bay. It was the same ship that had brought the Snow Baby's father and mother to the Snowland.
Then the baby and her mother went on board the ship and steamed away south to their own American home.
From "The Snow Baby."
Copyright, 1901, by Frederick A. Stokes Company.
[A SNOW HOUSE]
| knees | puppy | harness | dries |
| force | needle | clothing | twists |
| thaws | dimly | platform | whales |
In the summer time the Eskimo people live in tents made of skins. In the winter they build their houses out of hard blocks of ice and snow.
Perhaps you would like to visit an Eskimo family, and see how these yellow people live in a snow house. But how shall we get into the house? There seems to be no door in this strange-looking mound of snow.
We must bow our heads and crawl on our hands and knees through a dark passage. Soon we come to an open space where we stand upright in a dimly lighted room.
All around the room is a bank of snow next to the wall of the house. The top of this bank is broad and level like a table. It is covered with the thick skins of reindeer, bear, and foxes. Here the family eat and sleep, and here the children play.
Near the doorway stands the stove, on a raised platform. You would think it a very poor stove, for it is only a hollow stone filled with oil and moss. When the moss is lighted, it burns like the wick of a lamp.
This stove warms the room, melts the water for drinking, dries wet clothing, and thaws the frozen meat. It lights the room dimly and we see the Eskimo father, mother, and children in their snow house.
A bag is lying on the thick furs. Now it moves and the mother takes it in her arms. See, it is a baby boy in a bag of feathers.
When an Eskimo baby is in the house, he lies in his feather bag. And when he is out of doors, he is always on his mother's back, inside of her fur hood.
As soon as an Eskimo boy is old enough to walk, he has a puppy for a playmate. He learns to harness his dog and drive it all around the room. Soon he will be able to drive a team of dogs, as his father does, and ride swiftly over the snow.
The large boys catch fish and hunt seal. They even help to kill great whales and fierce white bears.
But what does the little Eskimo girl do? The little sister learns to sew and to make clothes out of skins. She makes her own needle from a hard bone or a piece of iron, and she twists thread from strips of deerskin. Everything the Eskimos use they make with their own hands.
Sometimes our ships force their way through the frozen ocean to their land of ice and snow. The Eskimo people think these great ships the most wonderful things they have ever seen.
[THE NORTHERN SEAS]
Up! up! let us a voyage take;
Why sit we here at ease?
Find us a vessel tight and snug,
Bound for the northern seas.
I long to see the Northern Lights,
With their rushing splendors, fly,
Like living things, with flaming wings,
Wide o'er the wondrous sky.
I long to see those icebergs vast,
With heads all crowned with snow,
Whose green roots sleep in the awful deep,
Two hundred fathoms low.
I long to hear the thundering crash
Of their terrific fall;
And the echoes from a thousand cliffs,
Like lonely voices call.
There we shall see the fierce white bear,
The sleepy seals aground,
And the spouting whales that to and fro
Sail with a dreary sound.
We'll pass the shores of solemn pine,
Where wolves and black bears prowl,
And away to the rocky isles of mist
To rouse the northern fowl.
And there, in the wastes of the silent sky,
With the silent earth below,
We shall see far off to his lonely rock
The lonely eagle go.
Then softly, softly we will tread
By island streams, to see
Where the pelican of the silent North
Sits there all silently.
—William Howitt.
[DECEMBER]
And now December's snows are here,
The light flakes flutter down,
And hoarfrost glitters, white and fair,
Upon the branches brown.
—Selected.
[JANUARY]
Wintry day! frosty day!
God a cloak on all doth lay;
On the earth the snow he sheddeth,
O'er the lamb a fleece he spreadeth,
Gives the bird a coat of feather
To protect it from the weather.
—Selected.
[FEBRUARY]
In the snowing and the blowing,
In the cold and cruel sleet,
Little flowers begin their growing,
Underneath your feet.
—Mary Mapes Dodge.
[CHRISTMAS EVERYWHERE]
Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas to-night!
Christmas in lands of the fir-tree and pine.
Christmas in lands of the palm-tree and vine.
Christmas where snow peaks stand solemn and white.
Christmas where cornfields lie sunny and bright!
Christmas where children are hopeful and gay,
Christmas where old men are patient and gray,
Christmas where peace, like a dove in his flight,
Broods o'er brave men in the thick of the fight,
Everywhere, everywhere, Christmas to-night.
For the Christ-Child who comes is the Master of all;
No palace too great and no cottage too small.
—Phillips Brooks.
[THE CHRISTMAS SONG]
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying: "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to man."
—St. Luke.
The shepherds were watching their flocks
On a beautiful starlit night,
When the sky was suddenly filled
With a band of angels bright.
Oh! shepherds fear not but rejoice,
For we bring good news, they sing;
In Bethlehem is born this day,
A saviour who is Christ your King!
A glad and wonderful song
Rang through the heavens then;
It was "Glory to God on high,
Peace on earth, good will toward men."
THE CHRISTMAS SONG.
[THE NEW YEAR]
The New Year comes in the midnight hour
When the beautiful world is still,
And the moonlight falls in a silver stream
Over meadow and wood and hill.
We can not hear the tread of his feet,
For so silently comes he;
But the ringing bells the good news tell
As they sound over land and sea.
Where'er he steps new joys upspring,
And hopes, that were lost or dim,
Grow sweet and strong in the golden hours,
That he everywhere bears with him.
He brings us snow from the fleecy clouds;
He sends us the springtime showers;
He gladdens our world with the light of love
And fills its lap with flowers.
Some day, as softly as he came,
He will pass through the open door,
And we who sing at his coming now
Will never see him more.
—Marie Zetterberg.
[HOW PLANTS GROW]
| trunk | halves | dissolves | juice |
| swells | course | openings | blood |
Cut an apple into halves and take out one of the little brown seeds. How small it is! Now look at an apple tree. Did the apple tree come out of a little brown seed like the one you hold in your hand?
You say that it did. Look again. Which is larger, the seed or the apple tree? And now you laugh, as you say: "Of course an apple tree is larger than an apple seed." Then there must be something in the apple tree that was not in the seed.
The tree has a trunk or stem. It has leaves and it has roots. How were all these made?
Do you say that the apple tree grew? But what do you mean by growing? Something must have come into the apple seed to make it grow into a plant. And something must have come into the little green apple plant to make it grow into a tree.
What was it? Where did the plant get it? Cut into a green stem of the apple tree. See how the juice runs out!
The apple tree was made from this juice which we call sap. This sap is the blood of the plant. It makes the plant grow just as your blood makes you grow.
The sap came to the little apple plant all the time it was growing. But where did the plant get the sap?
The food of a plant lies all about its roots. The rain, or water from your watering pot, falls around the plant. It sinks into the ground. Then the water dissolves the earth just as it dissolves sugar.
The seed swells, and the brown seed coat bursts. Then a little root runs down into the earth. This root has hundreds of openings or mouths. The little openings are so small that our eyes can not see them.
The roots suck in the water from the ground. The earth that is dissolved in the water creeps up into the plant. This juice or sap makes the plant grow.
But the plant must have air as well as food. The sap can not turn into wood and bark and fruit until it has met the air. So the sap flows up into the leaves and meets the air.
Apple Blossoms.
Then it finds its way into every part of the plant. It changes into the rough bark and hard wood of the apple tree. It changes into pink apple blossoms and buds. It changes into red apples and yellow apples. The same sap makes sweet apples and sour apples. Every part of a plant is made from sap. Is not that very strange?
We have learned that the roots take the food of plants from the earth. They do more than this. The roots are the feet of the plant.
You could not stand without your feet. You would fall on the ground or the floor. And so the tree or the plant could not stand without its roots.
Other plants grow just as the apple tree grows. The roots of a plant get food from the earth and keep the plant in its place in the ground. The stem makes the plant strong and holds it up in the air. And the leaves draw in just what the plants need from the air around them.
Fruit of the Apple Tree.
[TALKING IN THEIR SLEEP]
"You think I am dead,"
The apple tree said,
"Because I have never a leaf to show—
Because I stoop
And my branches droop,
And the dull gray mosses over me grow.
But I'm still alive in trunk and shoot;
The buds of next May
I fold away—
But I pity the withered grass at my foot."
"You think I am dead,"
The quick grass said,
"Because I have parted with stem and blade.
But under the ground
I am safe and sound
With the snow's thick blanket over me laid.
I'm all alive and ready to shoot,
Should the spring of the year
Come dancing here—
But I pity the flowers without branch or root."
"You think I am dead,"
A soft voice said,
"Because not a branch or root I own!
I never have died
But close I hide,
In a plumy seed that the wind has sown.
Patient I wait through the long winter hours;
You will see me again—
I shall laugh at you then,
Out of the eyes of a hundred flowers."
—Edith M. Thomas.
[A RIDDLE]
I have only one foot, but thousands of toes;
My one foot stands, but never goes;
I have many arms and they're mighty all;
And hundreds of fingers, large and small.
None e'er saw me eat—I've no mouth to bite;
Yet I feed all day in the full sunlight;
In the summer with song I shake and quiver,
But in winter I fast and groan and shiver.
—George Macdonald.
[SNOWFLAKES]
ut of the sky they come,
Wandering down the air,
Some to the roofs, and some
Whiten the branches bare;
Some in the empty nest,
Some on the ground below,
Until the world is dressed
All in a gown of snow;
Dressed in a fleecy gown
Out of the snowflakes spun;
Wearing a golden crown,
Over her head the sun.
Out of the sky again
Ghosts of the flowers that died
Visit the earth, and then
Under the white drifts hide.
—Frank Dempster Sherman.