By Elizabeth Harrison


Once upon a time, a long time ago, far away across the great ocean, in
a country called Germany, there could be seen a small log hut on the
edge of a great forest, whose fir trees extended for miles and miles
to the north. This little house, made of heavy hewn logs, had but one
room in it. A rough pine door gave entrance to this room, and a small
square window admitted the light. At the back of the house was built
an old-fashioned stone chimney, out of which in winter curled a thin,
blue smoke, showing that there was not very much fire within.

Small as the house was, it was large enough for two people who lived
in it. I want to tell you a story today about these two people. One
was an old gray-haired woman, so old that the little children of the
village, nearly half a mile away, often wondered whether she had come
into the world with the huge mountains and the giant fir trees, which
stood like giants back of her small hut. Her face was wrinkled all
over with deep lines, which, if the children could only have read
aright, would have told them of many years of cheerful, happy,
self-sacrifice; of loving, anxious, watching beside sick-beds; of
quiet endurance of pain, of many a day of hunger and cold, and of a
thousand deeds of unselfish love for other people; but, of course,
they could not read this strange handwriting. They only knew that she
was old and wrinkled, and that she stooped as she walked. None of
them seemed to fear her, for her smile was always cheerful, and she
had a kindly word for each of them if they chanced to meet her on her
way to and from the village. With this old, old woman lived a very
little girl. So bright and happy was she that the travellers who
passed by the lonesome little house on the edge of the forest often