Page:Brandes - Poland, a Study of the Land, People, and Literature.djvu/41

 Rh and their inferiors have certainly something Asiatic. No small degree of extravagance is usual in the employment of servants. In every house owned by a person of ample means, for instance, there is a doorkeeper who sits the whole day on a chair at the entrance to open the open hall door. A Dane could never be induced to sit so long on a chair. I was also much struck by the inclination or custom of the servants to wait up for the master at night, even when they were allowed to go to bed. Finally, according to northern ideas, their humility was amazing. A Polish servant does not kiss his master's hand but his sleeve, and so deeply rooted is this custom of expressing gratitude or affection that I have repeatedly seen young Polish students carry to their lips the arm of a man to whom they wished to show respect.

The Poles have not become much more economical under foreign rule than before. If any change had taken place in this respect it would have been in Posen, where the German example has made itself felt. They are prodigal of their time.

As there is no freedom of meeting, as no kind of association is allowed—the only club in Warsaw was closed, when a few years since it tried to prevent riots against the Jews in a suburb in which the police did not interfere—as, generally speaking, all public life is forbidden, so that fifty men cannot assemble in a hall without the permission and surveillance of the police, private society, which has to supply everything that is lacking in this direction, consumes an enormous amount of time.

The hospitality is very great and very tasteful. An exceptional quality which is inborn in the race, is tact. In this connection I must be allowed to note with gratitude the delicacy with which hospitality was shown to me on my arrival at Warsaw. I was taken to large, luxuriously furnished apartments, adorned with fine pictures, and supplied with books; my name was on the door; on the writing-table were visiting cards with my Warsaw address; and two servants who could speak foreign languages were told off to wait upon me.