Page:Our Grandfather by Vítězslav Hálek (1887).pdf/34



About a week after this they had just sat down to supper at grandfather’s, when a certain man entered having first knocked at the door. Uncle John was not at table.

A knocking at the door is almost an event at a farm house, all the more so at grandfather’s, because the village lay far from any 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 pastorage.

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