brought together in many ways; they made war, they traded, they
travelled, and, either as friends or foes, learned to know and take
interest in one another. What struck people most at first was how
different they were, in looks and in manners, in mind and in language.
Some were dark and some very fair; some quick and fierce, others slow
and persistent. Those who lived in the South, where the sun is seldom
clouded and the sea is bluer than the sky, were fond of all bright
things, loved luxury and ease; those whose homes were in the North,
where sad, dark woods sigh in the wind, where lanes and fields are
wrapped in mists and snow half the year, were themselves sad and dreamy,
rough of manner, but strong of heart.

But if people from different countries wondered at the differences
between them, they began to make other discoveries as they were brought
together more often and more closely.

There had been a great storm. A ship was wrecked and the pieces were
carried away on the dancing waves. Almost all the sailors were drowned;
only a few had been thrown out on the beach alive and taken in by poor
fishermen. They were sad and lonely, for they could not understand their
hosts and had no hope of being picked up soon by another ship of their
own country, it was so far away. To while away the time and to feel less
strange among the people, they began to learn the language, asking the
names of things as they went. Fancy how astonished they were when they
found out, as the sounds of the foreign words grew more familiar, that
the names of most things in common use were almost the same as in their
own language, also a great many of the most ordinary words: just a
letter or two changed, or a little difference in the way of
pronouncing--as, for instance, _mleko_ for _milk_, _sestra_ for
_sister_, _tre_ or _drei_ for _three_, and so on, sometimes more like,