Others did the same. And still others, again and again. It was like bees swarming. From time to time children, brothers, cousins said good-by and went. None ever came back. None ever were heard from. All that was known of them was that they did not all go the same way. Some went west, and some south; and some northwest or southwest. And they never met or heard from one another, either. They became and remained total strangers; did not even know of one another's existence. But all treasured memories of the old home--the latest gone, of course, more than those that went first, who naturally forgot most in the course of time.
The years went by--many hundreds of years; and great changes came over the world and the people that lived in it. They who used to keep much to themselves and look on one another with distrust and dislike were 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, sometimes less. And there were more surprises in store for the guests. When they had made progress enough to understand a great deal, they took much pleasure in listening to the songs which the women sang to the small children and the stories they told to the older ones. And these stories were not new to them! They were the same songs and stories that had been used for years by their mothers and grandmothers to amuse the children, and had always been known in the country. There was the little girl and the wolf, and the sleeping beauty, and the wicked stepmother, and the girl whom the prince knew by her tiny foot, and many, many more. The shipwrecked guests wondered much, and at last came to the conclusion that they and their hosts were distant cousins; for they remembered hearing from some aged men that they were themselves descended from a branch of a very old family--one of many which at different times left the old stock, long, long ago, and now, surely, here were the descendants of another branch.