Page:Our Grandfather by Vítězslav Hálek (1887).pdf/7



T has often been said to me that rural life is not a happily chosen subject for a story: that in the country uniformity prevails in life, in customs, in everything; and that the persons of the rural drama cannot interest us because there is no variety in them. If any of my readers hold such views, I must request them to suspend judgment until the end of my story. It is indeed, possible that the narrative will take us along unfrequented paths where the form of life is not so stirring as in the town. But yet man in essence is an exact copy of the citizen, for man is always interesting in so far as he is human; and he appreciates his good fortune just as little in the country as in the town; at the same time I do not wish to constrain my reader’s judgment.

We were still “wee scraps” when our father took us to visit grandfather. Grandfather dwelt in a house about an hour’s journey from ours. It was, then, a great event when father told us we were going there. Very wisely, he used always to tell us the week before, and though, to be sure, we were restless enough at all times, and each day tore our clothes, we were sure to be good children for the whole week if he told us where we were going the week after.