Page:Selected Czech tales - 1925.djvu/242

 through his infancy, and every winter his life hung in the balance.

All his hopes, therefore were centred in me. I was the first child in the town known to have a perambulator with rubber wheels, a fact on which the entire population commented for years afterwards. I was dressed up like a doll, and decked out in ribbons. When the nurse carried me out, I was wrapped in a red shawl shot with gold. People turned round to look after me, and the great lady of the place, the countess, once left her carriage in the market square in view of everybody, to kiss my forehead.

Imagine my father’s happiness, sir! He was of humble birth. Through a happy combination of circumstances he had been able to take his degree at a university, and to marry a comparatively rich wife. Being an ambitious man, he looked upon every member of his family as a means to attain the social success for which he was longing. Unfortunately my brother and sisters took after my mother, who was a plain little woman with a nose like a knob; they had also inherited her homeliness and slow peasant mentality.

So my father looked upon me as the sole hope of the family. I soon enjoyed endless