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 in winter as well as in summer.  If you go into the woods in winter, you will find that almost all the trees have dropped their pretty green leaves upon the ground, and are standing cold and naked in the winter wind; but the pines and the firs keep on their warm green clothes all the year round.

It was many years ago, before Jeannette was born, that her father came to the mountains with his sharp axe and cut down some of the fir-trees.  Other men helped him, and they cut the great trees into strong logs and boards, and built of them the house of which I have told you.  Now he will have a good home of his own for as long as he likes to live there, and to it will come his wife and children as God shall send them, to nestle among the hills.