Johanna Spyri

Rico and Wiseli Johanna Spyri

Rico was almost nine years old, and had been to school for two winters. Up there in the mountains there was no school in the summer-time; for then the teacher had his field to cultivate, and his hay and wood to cut, like everybody else, and nobody had time to think of going to school. This was not a great sorrow for Rico - he knew how to amuse himself. When he had once taken his place in the morning on the threshold, he would stand there for hours without moving, gazing into the far distance with dreamy eyes, until the door of the house over the way openen, and a little girl make her appearance looked over at him laughingly... In the translation of "Heimatlos" an effort has been made to hold as far as possible to the original, in order to give the reader of English the closest possible touch with the story as it stands in the German. This method retains the author's delightful simplicity, and it leaves revealed, even in her roundabout way of telling things, her charming adaptability as a writer for children