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.’