Now I have shown you a few of the beautiful things that have been made of glass, but there are very many other uses to which glass is applied that have not even been alluded to.  Steam engines, that work like real ones, have been made of glass; palaces have been built of it; great telescopes, by which the wonders of the heavens have been revealed, owe their power to it; and, in fact, it would seem to us, to-day, as if we could as well do without our iron as without our glass.

CARL.

In the middle of a dark and gloomy forest lived Carl and Greta.  Their father was a forester, who, when he was well, was accustomed to be away all day with his gun and dogs, leaving the two children with no one but old Nurse Heine; for their mother died when they were very little.  Now Carl was twelve years old, and Greta nine.  Carl was a fine-looking boy, but Nurse Heine said that he had a melancholy countenance.  Greta, however, was a pretty, bright-faced, merry little girl.  They were allowed to wander through a certain part of the forest, where their father thought there was no especial danger to fear.

In truth, Carl was not melancholy at all, but was just as happy in his way as Greta was in hers.  In the summer, while she was pulling the wood flowers and weaving them into garlands, or playing with her dogs, or chasing squirrels, Carl would be seated on some root or stone with a large sheet of coarse card-board on his knee, on which he drew pictures with a piece of sharpened charcoal.  He had sketched, in his rough way, every pretty mass of foliage, and every picturesque rock and waterfall within his range.  And in the winter, when the icicles were hanging from the cliffs, and the snow wound white arms around the dark green cypress boughs, Carl still found beautiful pictures everywhere, and Greta plenty of play in building snow-houses and statues.  And, moreover, Carl had lately discovered in the brooks some colored stones, which were soft enough to sharpen sufficiently to give a blue tint to his skies, and green to his trees; and thus he made pictures that Nurse Heine said were more wonderful than those in the chapel of the little village of Evergode.

I have said that the forest was dark and gloomy, because it was composed chiefly of pines and cypresses, but it never seemed so to the children.  They knew how to read, but had no books that told them of any lands brighter and sunnier than their own.  And then, too, beyond the belt of pines in which was their home, there was a long stretch of forest of oaks and beeches, and in this the birds liked to build their nests and sing; and there were such splendid vines, and lovely flowers!  And, right through the pine forest, not more than half a mile from their cottage, there was a broad road.  It is true, it was a very rough one, and but little used, but it represented the world to Carl and Greta.  For it did sometimes happen that loaded wagons would jolt over it, or a rough soldier gallop along, and more rarely still, a gay cavalier would prance by the wondering children.