Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/143

 high road. Thus it occasioned no little surprise if ever a stranger stopped there to ask his way.

The neighbours here still lived almost in a state of nature. The slight stock of reading which they had learnt at school, would have been long ago forgotten had not the prayer-books which they took with them to church on Sunday, been printed in plain black letters.

As for writing they remembered just so much that most of them could subscribe their names, he who could not manage it did not trouble his head about it, for three crosses set all right. Without these, indeed, they scarcely ever subscribed their names.

The learning which they called ready reading and running hand they considered to be the privileged possession of the nobility, while it was their business to look after tilth and pasturage.

A book never strayed into this village, and if one had wandered out of the road hither, it would have been like a deserted orphan. No one would have received it into his house, nor even given it a night’s lodging. The parents only bought those ABC’s, first and second part, which they called reading-books. To give money for any other sort of book would have been to squander money godlessly. Even at grandfather’s the calendar formed the whole library; grandmother always put a large pair of spectacles on her nose to read it in winter, and its dog-eared leaves always sufficed just so far that it held out till St. Vaclav’s Day [28th September] when it was changed for a new one.

Now, however, things are somewhat changed there, but not much.

It was fortunate for them that they possessed a good soil, for that was what specially affected them. At that time it had never occurred to any of them to improve their land; if it did not deteriorate still it did not get better.

The furniture which ancestors had used came without change to their descendants who in turn left it unchanged.

Even when a more enlightened age opened for our people they did not pay much attention to it here; it did not speak to them. This is the more curious, because in the surrounding parishes their neighbours comprehend everything that bears the name of progress, and in this respect stand in the van of all our peasantry.