Page:Poet Lore, volume 35, 1924.pdf/369

 Broz.—Somebody can help you even now.

Dr. Svoboda.—Who?

Broz.—Mr. Kytka.

Dr. Svoboda.—Mr. Kytka but that is uncertain

Broz.—Or

Dr. Svoboda (Anxiously).—Or?

Broz.— Sell the estate to Neufeld.

Dr. Svoboda (Shortly).—Even you advise me to do so?

Broz.—I do not, but the ciphers do.

Dr. Svoboda.—And you can offer no other advice?

Broz.—I cannot. Otherwise, I see no way of averting your ruin.

Dr. Svoboda.—Inevitable the word sounds like a knell! But do you not believe, my friend, that there may possibly be people who live true to their convictions, and act upon a certain principle, even when they know that by doing so they will plunge themselves into inevitable ruin?

Broz.—Possibly so, but such people have no duty to others to consider, and no one to think of but themselves.

Dr. Svoboda—But I also know of others, others who owed a duty to their families, yet did not hesitate to face their doom for the sake of those things which were held sacred by them. I myself saw an example which made me shudder. For all eternity, it became impressed upon my memory. Listen, friend. (Motions to to seat himself, at the same time taking a seat beside him.) Three years ago, I was passing through a little town near Budejovic. In the middle of a narrow lane, I came upon some broken furniture which had been forcibly thrown out from an abandoned house. A woman sat upon a chest with her children, lamenting, sobbing, all of them in tears, while her husband stood helplessly behind her. Unkempt, dishevelled, with bewildered eyes, he was a pathetic figure standing there, with his hands clasped behind his soiled shoemaker’s apron. He was a bootmaker by trade. I approached and sympathetically inquired what had happened. “They have thrown us out!” he answered. And why?—“Because I would not deny my mother tongue! In this whole nest, there is not a room they will rent me!”—What are you going to do?—“I will move somewhere else.” —Do you know how you will earn a living?—“I do not; but I will not give up my selfrespect.”

You see, my friend so he spoke, so he acted  one of the rabbleWant, misery, actual destruction,