“How beautiful! How beautiful!” they exclaimed. “Who has done this carving? He is a genius. Bring him here and let us see him.”
Little Antonio was brought in and they crowded around him as he told them about his work and himself. “The lad must be taught,” they said. “If he can work so well in butter, what could he do in marble when he is a man?”
And so Antonio went to school, and became one of the great artists of the world. But his first piece of work was the lion made out of a tub of butter.
THE LEAK IN THE DIKE
In which it appears that a leak should be stopped at once, and that a little boy can do a great service.
Holland is a country far across the sea. The boys and girls there wear wooden shoes. They like to skip and dance along the streets clicking these shoes together, or making them ring as they strike the hard pavement.
Peter was a little boy who liked to skip and dance with the others. He was a poor boy and had to wear wooden shoes like the others. He did not mind that, however. He liked best of all to play on the top of the sea-wall, for where Peter lived, the people had to build sea-walls, or dikes, to keep the water from rushing over the land.
Every day Peter would play on the top of the dikes, and was careful not to fall into the water. He could see the great ocean on one side of the dike, with ships and fishing boats far out at sea, and on the other side, below the level of the water, he could see his own little home, and the houses of his neighbors and friends.
One day, while he was playing he heard a little trickle of water. He stopped to listen. He found a tiny stream running through a small hole in the dike.