Author
is unknown
Everyone loves his home. He loves it whether the home is
large or small, old or new. It is frequently the place where he was born, where
for years his parents lived and near which reside his relatives and friends. In
a sense, it is the place of all others that really seems to belong to him.
Out of the Atlantic ocean, far from any coast, there is a
small island which you would think a very poor place to live. You would not
like to spend one night there. Storms often sweep over it. Clouds hang about it
and shut out the sunshine for weeks at a time. There are no trees; so the
people build little houses of rough stones and hide from the storms or the hot
sun in these huts. They cannot keep grain, because the many rates eat it up at
once. They live on fish almost all the time. So few ships pass that the people
rarely see anything of the rest of the world. If a steamer passes, they jump
into their boats and the row out to it. They just wish to see some other
people, to learn something of the big world, or to get something to eat. Most
of the time they spend their lives doing things that you would call very
uninteresting.
When
a certain government learned of the condition of these people, it offered to
move them to some other part of the world and to help them get a new start in
life. But, strange as it may seem, none of them wanted to leave! This poor
island was their home. They had built humble little huts, and learned to live
the hard life and they wanted to live and die there.
