Page:Our Grandfather by Vítězslav Hálek (1887).pdf/35

 house, nor even given it a night’s lodging. The parents only bought those A B C’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.

It is plain enough, indeed, that not only the sea hath its islands: even human progress hath them, and only here and there where the sea is tossed by storms and wind, fall on these islands some benign drops, but only as it would seem by accident.

Then, as I was saying, a knocking at the door was here in reality an event, and grandmother started so that she trembled down to the hand in which she held her spoon.