Das Zauberbuch der drei armen Büblein (The Magic Book of the Three Poor Boys)

"Up on the mountain"—Seelisberg—there lived three poor brothers, young, hungry little lads. One day they caught, on the Ruoss-diele, or heaven knows where, an old magic book. With its help they made themselves unseen and conjured themselves into the cattle-stall of the parish priest, where in all modesty they let the foam off the freshly milked milk taste good to them: "And there they foamed."

At that time on Seelisberg there served the priest Peter Anton Furrer († 1883), and he owned a landed holding and a notable stock of cattle. While the three rascals, however, made themselves merry with the milk-foam, they were also at home, but likewise unseen, and chatted or read half-aloud in their precious book.

One evening the mother asked: "Where are you all, that one hears me prattling and yet can see you nowhere?" "In the parson's shed are we, and are here foaming," confessed the lads. "Yes, how do you do that! one hears you here in the room?" the mother asks further and gets for answer: "We are reading in a book." "Then lay it away!" she commands. Then they laid it on the table and came forth to be seen again.

The Christian woman took up the uncanny book and brought it to the priest, who burned it. Yet the boys still often said, when hunger plagued them: "If only we had not given that book—then we could still go foaming more, and fend off hunger!"

To the teller I said: "If I had been mother, I would have let them keep the book, for a little bit of foam—this would now not have been theft; the priest would surely have allowed it." But he meant: "The mother would have thought: it could yet lead to worse. In our school-book it said: 'With small one begins; with great one one ends.'"

Jos. Maria Aschwanden, 60 years old