Page:A Picture-book without Pictures and Other Stories (1848).djvu/141

 place in the middle of the church, and represents the whole Armenian congregation.

In front of the church, in the market-place, where the lime-trees are in blossom, there is a great dance of young and old. In the middle of the circle stand the musicians; one plows the bag-pipe, the other scrapes the fiddle. The circle twists itself first to the right, then to the left. Everybody is in their utmost grandeur, with fringe, flowers, and bare feet. To-day it is Sunday!

Several little lads run about in nothing but a shirt; upon their heads, however, they wear a large man’s hat, and in the hat a flower. Official people, gentlemen and ladies all dressed in the fashion of Vienna, walk about to look at the people, the dancing people. The red evening sun illumines the white church tower, the amber-colored Danube, and the wood-crowned mountains of Servia: may it shine also in my song when I sing of it! How beautiful and animated! How fresh and peculiar! Everything indicates a holiday. Everything shows that to-day is Sunday!