But the children saw other houses more like those in which their grandfathers and grandmothers had lived. In those houses the fireplace was built in the corner of the room. They saw some fireplaces with kettles hanging just as they had hung in the days when a fire had blazed on the fireplace. In the room were rude chairs cut from large tree trunks. On the ceilings pictures had been carved and painted. The children knew the stories which those pictures told, for the stories were Bible stories which they had read many times. [Illustration: ANOTHER ROOM IN AN OPEN-AIR MUSEUM] Some of the boys found an old bed which amused them very much. It had three stories. The first story stood out into the room about a foot farther than the second story, and the second story stood out about a foot farther than the top story. In that way there were two steps up to the upper bed. The girls and boys laughed, then the teacher lifted the lid into the lowest bed and said, “This is where the cats and dogs slept.” Then he showed them the inside of the middle bed and said, “This is where the children slept.” The children then guessed that the top bed was for the mother and father. [Illustration: FOLK DANCING AT A MUSEUM] That afternoon the pupils went to see the folk-dances. Some of their older brothers and sisters were in the dances. They wore costumes such as Swedish people long ago wore, they danced the dances that were danced in those days. When the school children got back to their school the next day, they wanted to dance some of the old Swedish dances. The gymnasium teacher helped them learn the steps, and the sewing teacher helped them make their costumes. Then one day they danced for their mothers and fathers and their grandmothers and grandfathers. When the teacher of those children told them about the man who had made the gift of the museum to Sweden, the pupils agreed that the man who built the open-air museum was a citizen of whom Sweden may be proud. A Tale of a Wandering Story-Teller “Suppose we pretend that we are in the feast hall of one of the old guest houses of the Norsemen long, long ago,” said one teacher to her children after they had visited an open-air museum. Then as the teacher told the children about an evening in a guest house such as they had seen at the museum, they imagined people seated around the long table eating from the rude bowls and drinking from an old drinking horn, while they listened to a tale told by a wandering story-teller. A story-teller in those northlands was an important person in the old days before stories had been written in books for people to read for themselves. In those days, story-tellers went about from place to place telling tales. They were always welcome guests in any home, for people had little entertainment.