selves in their
place, for we love the home of our childhood, "be it ever so humble,"
better than roaming like an exile.

But all the time I haven't told you how Gemila looks, nor what clothes
she wears. Her face is dark; she has a little straight nose, full
lips, and dark, earnest eyes; her dark hair will be braided when it
is long enough. On her arms and her ankles are gilded bracelets and
anklets, and she wears a brown cotton dress loosely hanging halfway to
the bare, slender ankles. On her head the white fringed handkerchief,
of which I told you, hangs like a little veil. Her face is pleasant,
and when she smiles her white teeth shine between her parted lips.

She is the child of the desert, and she loves her desert home.

I think she would hardly be happy to live in a house, eat from a
table, and sleep in a little bed like yours. She would grow restless
and weary if she should live so long and so quietly in one place.

THE LITTLE MOUNTAIN MAIDEN.

[Illustration]

I want you to look at the picture on this page. It is a little deer:
its name is the chamois. Do you see what delicate horns it has, and
what slender legs, and how it seems to stand on that bit of rock and
lift its head to watch for the hunters.

Last summer I saw a little chamois like that, and just as small: it
was not alive, but cut or carved of wood,--such a graceful pretty
little plaything as one does not meet every day.

Would you like to know who made it, and where it came from?

It was made in the mountain country, by the brother of my good
Jeannette, the little Swiss maiden.

Here among the high mountains she lives with her father, mother, and
brothers; and far up among those high snowy peaks, which are seen
behind the house, the chamois live, many of them together, eating
the tender grass and little pink-colored flowers, and leaping and
springing away over the ice and snow when they see the men coming up
to hunt them.

I will tell you by and by how it happened that Jeannette's tall
brother Joseph carved this tiny chamois from wood. But first you must
know about this small house upon the great hills, and how they live up
there so near the blue sky.

One would think it might be easier for a child to be good and pure so
far up among the quiet hills, and that there God would seem to come
close to the spirit, even of a little girl or boy.

On the sides of the mountains tall trees are growing,--pine and fir
trees, which are green i