The 2012 Iditarod begins on Saturday, March 3, and as usual the Junior Dispatch will offer a reading project to go along with the race.
This year’s selection is “Little White Fox and his Arctic Friends” by Roy J. Snell. The 18-chapter book features a collection of short stories about animals living in the arctic — the same kind the Iditarod mushers are likely to see on the more remote part of the trail!
Because “Little White Fox” is an 18-story feature, we’ll actually start running it on Monday, February 27. That should help us end the novel by the time the Iditarod is over.
Parents, teachers and caregivers are encouraged to take a look at the entire book in its free digital form at Project Gutenberg (full menu version is here). Our presentation of the story will include essay questions, vocabulary words, coloring pages and videos to go along with each story.
Two years went past and Jan’s work at the Hospice brought him great happiness, for he knew that he was doing the work of his ancestors and living a useful life.
Often as he traveled the snow trails, he remembered the Land of No Snow, the warm sunshine, the fragrant flowers and the beautiful trees laden with golden fruit. But the one thing for which his loyal heart yearned most was the touch of a wrinkled hand on his head and the sound of the old poundmaster’s voice. No one knew Jan’s thoughts, for he was always eager to do his work the best he knew how, and to teach the puppies to be proud of the privilege of helping people.
Brother Antoine had left the Hospice and gone down into the warmer climate of the Valley of the Rhone. His work had been done bravely and unselfishly, and the monks had asked that he be sent to a place where sunshine and milder air would give him a chance to recover his strength and prolong his life. Jan greatly missed this dear friend.
THE END: This is the final chapter of "Prince Jan, St. Bernard." You can leave a comment below on what you think might happen next in Prince Jan's life.
There were cold mornings when Prince Jan rose stiffly, for he had not been hardened to the trail work from puppy days as Rollo and the other dogs had been. Five years of warm sunshine in the Land of No Snow had made Jan’s muscles soft and flabby and he felt the cold weather more than any of the other St. Bernards. Then, too, his long hair made the work of the trails harder for him because the snow clung to his fur and when it melted and soaked to his skin, the monks watched carefully to keep him from becoming chilled. Once or twice he had limped badly after coming in from his work, and then he had been rubbed and taken into the Big Room and allowed to stretch before the fireplace, and for a while he was not sent out with the other dogs.
One day during summer many of the dogs were given a chance to exercise outdoors. Jan sat watching the youngsters tumble each other about, while he recalled the times when he and Rollo had played that way and old Bruno had sat watching them. Then one of the pups began barking, and soon the others added their calls of welcome as a little party of travelers appeared in the opening of the mountain pass toward Martigny. Jan, mindful of his responsibility, joined in the calls. His deep, mellow tones sounded distinctly above the others, but he did not know that those on the trail had stopped while an old man, mounted on a mule, cried out, “Listen! That is Jan! I know his voice!”
A younger man and a young woman who were also mounted on mules, laughed happily, though the woman’s eyes were filled with tears as she looked at the old man. Then they hurried on and soon were in plain sight of the steps that led into the Hospice. In a few more minutes the mules stopped and the dogs crowded about to show how glad they were to have visitors.
The old man climbed down from his mule and turned to face the dogs. He looked quickly from one to the other, until he found the one he sought. Prince Jan started, his eyes lighted up suddenly, his head was lifted high, then with a yelp of joy the big dog leaped forward.
“Jan! Jan! You haven’t forgotten me, have you?” cried the old poundmaster, kneeling down and putting his arms about the shaggy neck, while the dog’s rough tongue licked the wrinkled hand, and little whimpers of delight told of Jan’s happiness.
Jan slept soundly that night, and when he woke just before the first peep of day, and saw the other dogs stretched around him, he remembered that he was back home once more with his mother, Rollo, Bruno, and the rest of the Hospice dogs, and that now he would have a chance to do the work of his forefathers.
The soft, deep tones of the Hospice bell called them all to waken for a new day and its work. The voices of the monks singing in the chapel ceased, and at once all the dogs turned expectant eyes toward the corridor, where Brother Antoine appeared with food for their breakfast.
They leaped around the monk, or mauled each other in play, while the hot food was poured into a small trough, and soon Prince Jan was eating his share with the rest of them. They all made way for him, and there was no crowding, growling, or fighting over their morning meal.
When it was over the door leading into the yard was opened and the dogs tumbled out, barking, jumping, knocking each other over, or scampering full tilt in merry play. Rollo and his brother forgot they were grown-up and frisked together as they had done in the days before Prince Jan had been taken to the Land of No Snow.
BACK TO THE SNOW: Prince Jan's experiences in America made him long to return to his birthplace.
Once more Brother Antoine stood on the steps watching them, and at last he called Jan, who trotted obediently to him, and followed through the arched corridors and the long hallway until they reached the three doors that opened, one after the other, to the outside steps.
Jan saw the doctor and the captain already there. The old man was mounted on the mule, Ketty, while Pierrot, the driver, waited beside it. The doctor held a long, stout stick.
With a bark of welcome, the dog hurried to them and stood up on his hind legs so he could lick the hand of the captain and feel its gentle touch on his head.
Brother Antoine paused at the top step and watched, but he did not speak as Pierrot called aloud and the mule started briskly down the trail leading to Martigny. The doctor walked beside the mule, and then Jan understood that they were leaving the Hospice.
He stopped and gazed back wistfully. The monk on the step gave no sign, uttered no word to call him back. Sadly Jan turned and moved along the trail behind the mule. The doctor and the captain, and even Pierrot, looked at the dog, but none of them spoke to him.
For some little distance Jan trudged heavily, then he stopped suddenly and twisted for a last look at his home. He saw the high-peaked roof and the snow-clad mountains looming above it, then he turned again to follow the travelers. They were now some distance ahead of him and a jagged cliff hid them from his eyes. Jan did not move.
Through a gap he saw the captain, the doctor, and the guide. They halted this time. They were waiting there for him.
The dog started quickly toward them, but something made him look again where Brother Antoine stood on the steps. Jan hesitated, then he sat down facing the trail toward Martigny. In a few minutes he saw the little procession start on its way. He knew he could catch up with them easily if he ran fast, but still he sat without moving, his eyes fastened on that gap between the mountains.
He lifted his head and sent out the cry of his forefathers, so that the echoes rang again and again. The answering voices died away, there was no sound save the swish of melting snow that slipped down the steep places, and then Prince Jan, St. Bernard, turned and trotted up the trail to the home of his ancestors.
Brother Antoine waited on the top step. As the dog reached him, the monk stooped and patted him, whispering softly, “It is not easy, Prince Jan, when the paths that Love and Duty travel lie far apart.”
And so Prince Jan came back to the work of his ancestors, and as the months passed by he saved many lives and was very happy. The young dogs listened in respectful wonder when he told of the strange places and things that he had found in the Land of No Snow. They learned from him the lessons of obedience, loyalty, and kindliness.
“If you do the very best you know how, it will always work out right in the end,” Jan ended each talk.
But sometimes at night as he slept among the other dogs, he saw the captain walking about a room. Cheepsie was perched on the old man’s shoulder, while Hippity-Hop skipped beside them, and the dog-knew that they were thinking of him.
Then Jan’s ears cocked up, his tail swished gently on the stone floor of the Hospice, for in his dreams he heard the faint sound of a quavering voice singing:
“Old dog Tray is ever faithful,
Grief cannot drive him away.
He’s gentle and he’s kind
And you’ll never, never find
A better friend than old dog Tray.”
VOCABULARY
Look up and define these words:
Chapel –
Expectant –
Trough –
Frisked –
YOUR REACTIONS TO THE CHAPTER
In chapter 16, Prince Jan made the difficult choice about his future — whether to stay at the hospice or return to America with his friends. Have you ever made a difficult choice? What did you do and why? Post a comment below or email your story to juniordispatch@yorkdispatch.com.
VIDEO — A FROLLICK IN THE SNOW
Editor’s note: This is Junior Dispatch’s serialization of the 1921 book “Prince Jan, St. Bernard” by Forrestine C. Hooker. This version includes all of the original illustrations as well as additional images from around the Internet.
At the end of each chapter is a vocabulary list, an essay question and a related video, usually of a St. Bernard doing the kind of things St. Bernards do.
Junior Dispatch invites you to participate by commenting or e-mailing juniordispatch@yorkdispatch.com with your thoughts on the chapter, vocabular and essay responses or artwork. If you submit a response, you will earn a JD water bottle!
Once again Jan went on a big boat, but he did not worry this time, because his friends were with him. Hippity-Hop and Cheepsie had been left with the doctor’s wife until the captain should return for them.
The voyage was followed by traveling in a train, and each day of the whole journey the doctor and captain visited Jan. When he was on the train, his friends took him out of the car a number of times, so he could stretch his legs and run about on the ground while the train waited at a station. It did not take Jan long to understand that if he did not get back in the car he would be left behind. So he watched very carefully and at the first call of the captain or the doctor, he ran swiftly to the right car and jumped in it. Passengers on the long train watched him do this, for he never mistook his own car though there were several others just like the one in which he rode.
Jan wore his silver collar, and wherever he went men and women would look at it, then pat his big head and praise him. He was very happy though he did not know where he and his friends were going.
That evening, after supper, while Jan dozed in front of the fireplace with its cheerful, glowing logs, and Hippity-Hop curled in a tight ball between his paws, he did not know that the captain was telling how Jan had been brought to the pound, sick from neglect and vicious from abuse, to be killed.
The eyes of the young mother filled with tears, and she glanced from the sleeping dog to a door leading into another room, where her baby was lying, safe and warm. But when she stooped, suddenly and stroked the dog’s head gently, his eyes opened, his tail thumped the floor, and then Jan went to sleep again, for he was very tired.
DOG FACTS: St. Bernards can weigh as much as 220 lbs. and can measure 102 inches long.
And while he took his second nap, the father of the baby explained to the captain that he was the doctor in the little town, and had it not been for Prince Jan, the pretty little mother and her child would never have come back to the home on the bluff, after their visit to friends in California.
“Prince Jan was born in the Hospice,” the old man told them. “He was only a puppy when Mr. Pixley brought him to California. To me, it never seemed just right, taking him away from the place where he belonged and where he could have been so useful, and then to treat him so cruelly. Of course, the Pixleys didn’t know the truth, but that didn’t help poor Jan.”
The doctor turned and knelt down, studying the sleeping dog, then he rose and went back to his chair.
“I took a walking tour of Switzerland after I finished my studies in Europe,” he said, at last. “So that was how I happened to be at the Hospice the day that dog was taken away. I had heard one of the monks tell about this dog’s father, who died saving travelers on an ice-bridge. I went on my way toward Italy, and I saw this dog start down the trail to Martigny, the opposite direction. I have never forgotten the pitiful look in his eyes nor the call he gave as he was led away. I felt then that it was a tragedy, but never had an idea of what the poor little fellow would have to suffer. Nor had I any idea that the lives of my dear ones would be saved through him!”
“The only thing I ever knew about the St. Bernard dogs was that they lived at the Hospice and went out to hunt lost people in the snow,” the captain spoke. “You are the first one I ever knew who had been there. I wish I could have seen it and those splendid dogs!”
“You know, the Pass of Great St. Bernard is the main road of travel between Italy and Switzerland,” the doctor went on, and his wife leaned forward as eagerly as Jan’s master to hear about Jan’s birthplace. “It was through this Pass that Napoleon Bonaparte led his army of soldiers, single file and afoot, in the month of May, 1800!”
“I have read about that march,” interrupted the old man, “and I know what it meant, with food and ammunition and those big guns to haul. You see, I served all through the four years of the Civil War.”
“May is the most dangerous time in the Alps, for the snow melts and slides in great avalanches, often catching people with no chance for escape. When I stood on the stone steps of the Hospice, where many feet have worn little hollows, and I remembered how many people would never have reached those steps without the dogs’ help, I felt that though Napoleon was a great general and a brave man, the dogs of the Hospice were just as great and just as brave. And the monument to Barry, near the old Hospice, was as fine in my eyes as the beautiful white marble one that Napoleon built in memory of General de Sais, who died on that trip, and which is in the chapel of the Hospice. Both the general and Barry did their duty, as they saw it.”
The little mother interrupted him, her eyes shining and her hands held out. “Napoleon made that march for his own glory and ambition, and to kill those who opposed his way,” she said, “but Barry and the other dogs risked death each day to save lives, with no thought of gain for themselves.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” the old captain nodded and spoke.
“What surprised me most,” continued the doctor, “was that the monks who live in the Hospice do not ask pay for anything they do. The people who stop there do not even have to pay for the food that is eaten. When I asked how much I owed for shelter and food those two days I was there, they smiled and told me there was no charge. Of course, I could not leave in that way, and when I insisted, I learned there was a little box in the Monastery Chapel for purely volunteer offerings. No one ever watches that box, and no one is ever asked to put anything into it. And yet,” he finished after a little pause, “often as many as five or six hundred people have stopped at the Hospice in one day. I was told that between twenty and twenty-five thousand people pass over the trail each year. Then when one remembers that for a thousand years the ancestors of Prince Jan have been traveling those trails and saving lives, one can understand the splendid work of those monks and the dogs.”
“And to-day,” the little mother’s voice trembled, “dear old Prince Jan proved himself worthy of his ancestors and his heritage.”
AT THE HOSPICE: This painting shows a monk with two of the St. Bernard rescue dogs. The Great St. Bernard Pass is the third highest road in Switzerland.
“Barry saved forty-two lives. His skin has been mounted and stands, wonderfully life-like, in the Museum of Berne,” the doctor said, thoughtfully. “He did the work in the familiar places, the work he had been trained to do; but to-day, there were ninety-two lives saved by Prince Jan, with only his wonderful intelligence to guide him through the sea and make him hold fast to that rope.”
For several moments none of them spoke, but their eyes were on the dog that slept quietly at their feet, while the little three-legged kitten snuggled closely against his breast and purred loudly.
“One of the most pitiful sights at the Hospice is the House of the Dead, a short distance from the Hospice. Those who have never been identified sleep there. Sometimes, you see, the dogs and monks are too late, or the avalanches of melting snow uncover people who have been buried months, or even years. The Hospice is built on solid rock, so there is no place to dig graves. Not a tree grows within seven miles of the buildings, because it is so cold, and there is no earth for the roots. It is a bare, desolate place at all times.”
“Jan must have been bewildered, going from such a place to a home in California,” the little mother spoke. “And yet, see how he worked out his life and made himself worthy!”
The doctor lighted a cigar and leaned back in his big chair. “The snow at the Hospice is not like snow in other places,” he finally said. “You know how, usually, it clings in masses, and when trodden upon it packs firmly; but in the Alps during a storm, the snow freezes as it falls and forms into little hard pellets. These tiny lumps of ice pile up around a traveller, and when he tries to push onward he sinks as though in a bed of quicksand. Unless help is at hand he soon is buried out of sight. The winds sweep fiercely through the passes between the mountain peaks, and send terrible, whirling clouds of snow that cut the face and blind the eyes, and many times a wanderer plunges over a precipice that he cannot see, or worn by struggles, he sinks exhausted to die. Then, there are the ice-bridges. What I am telling will give only a faint idea of the importance of the work of those magnificent dogs of the Hospice. And there is something that is not generally known, but is just as heroic. The monks who go to the Hospice volunteer for that work, knowing fully that five years up there in the altitude and intense cold mean practically the end of their lives. It ruins their lungs, and so, after a time, they go quietly down into the milder air of the Valley of the Rhone, in France, and there they wait cheerfully during the short span of life ahead of them. Only the young and strong monks are sent to the Hospice.”
After the doctor ceased speaking they all sat silently and watched the blazing logs, for each of the listeners, as well as the doctor, was thinking of the sacrifice and unselfishness of those monks, and the brave loyalty of their dog-friends on the trail.
“I wish I had enough money to send Prince Jan back to his own work and home,” the captain said wistfully. “Maybe, though, I can manage it some day,” he added more hopefully. “I feel as if he ought to be there with the others.”
“You are right,” agreed the doctor, and his wife nodded her head quickly. “Jan’s work, his kin, his home, lie back there at the Hospice. I owe the lives of my wife and my baby to him, and if you are willing to let him go back there, I will take him back to the Hospice myself. But, won’t you miss him?”
“It would make me as happy as it would make him, to know he was back there again,” answered the old man eagerly, as he stooped over and caressed the dog’s head.
Jan, in his sleep, recognized the touch and swished his tail lightly, but he did not open his eyes, and he never knew what the doctor and the captain had been talking about that evening.
But when it was known in the little town that the doctor was planning to take Prince Jan back to the Hospice, and those who had been saved from the ship heard the story of the dog, every one wanted to help. The newspaper printed the story of Prince Jan and his ancestors, and then people kept coming to see him, and most of them brought money for the trip back to the Hospice.
A beautiful collar of silver was made for him, and on it were engraved the words,
A TOKEN OF GRATITUDE FROM THE NINETY-TWO PEOPLE WHOSE LIVES WERE SAVED BY PRINCE JAN, WHEN ALL HOPE WAS LOST.
With this collar was a purse of money sufficient to pay Jan’s passage home, and a nice sum left over to give to the monks who cared for the dogs at the Hospice.
But the biggest surprise of all came when Captain Smith found that he, too, was to make the trip to the Hospice with the doctor and Prince Jan.
The old man wrote a letter to his daughter, explaining everything and saying he would come to her as soon as he and the doctor could get back.
Jan did not know what all the excitement in the little home meant, but every one patted him or spoke kindly, and the old captain’s eyes were shining all the time, as he trotted about the rooms, whistling.
VOCABULARY
Look up and define these words:
Hollow (noun) —
Heritage –
Desolate –
Gratitude –
YOUR REACTIONS TO THE CHAPTER
In chapter 14, several people talk about helping Prince Jan return to his home at the hospice, which would be a very expensive journey. They then raise money to do so. Have you ever helped raise money or do something to help an important cause or charity? Tell us about the cause and your effort to help in the comments below, or e-mail juniordispatch@yorkdispatch.com
VIDEO — ST. BERNARD SQUEEZE
Editor’s note: This is Junior Dispatch’s serialization of the 1921 book “Prince Jan, St. Bernard” by Forrestine C. Hooker. This version includes all of the original illustrations as well as additional images from around the Internet.
At the end of each chapter is a vocabulary list, an essay question and a related video, usually of a St. Bernard doing the kind of things St. Bernards do.
Junior Dispatch invites you to participate by commenting or e-mailing juniordispatch@yorkdispatch.com with your thoughts on the chapter, vocabular and essay responses or artwork. If you submit a response, you will earn a JD water bottle!
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The 2012 Iditarod begins on Saturday, March 3, and as usual the Junior Dispatch will offer a reading project to go along with the race.
