Page:The Czechoslovak Review, vol4, 1920.pdf/236

 that green guise upon his grave, and as if he had felt the inexpressible bliss of that embrace and of the glowing kiss which penetrated thru the cold bark into his heart.

The party reutrned. Uljana was already sitting quietly in her place again.

“Our good fellows have been passing their time in a more useful way,” said old Ivan Ivanovitch jovially, smoothing his white mustache, “they have bagged a first-rate roebuck.”

This hunting episode was discussed in a jocular manner. But I had no thoughts except for Jan’s epilogue.

“Please show me the page that you saved from my fellow-countryman’s poem”, I asked Tabunov.

“Ah yes, here it is.” And the surgeon took a charred and yellow sheet of paper out of his pocket-book.

“And read us these verses aloud, please,—I should so much like to hear what a Czech poem sounds like,” exclaimed Anna Kirilovna.

“Yes, recite it to us with the appropriate feeling,—stand over there in the shadow of the ash-tree by the poet’s grave, it will be very touching”, remarked Aglaja Andrejevna, and it was difficult to decide whether these words were ironical or the expression of a momentary sentimental mood.

Involuntarily I stepped up to the ash-tree, the top of which was now trembling from time to time in the wind. Holding the paper in my hand, I gave another glance at Uljana,—her enchanting blue eyes, glistening with tears, were resting fixedly upon my lips.

“Mind your hat!” Suslikov admonished me at this moment, and while I clutched at my hat with one hand, a violent puff of wind suddenly dragged the paper out of the other, and in a twinkling carried it away over the abyss.

“Ah!” exclaimed everybody with one accord, and they all scrambled to the edge of the chasm.

Tabunov stretched his hand out towards the paper, which was gently fluttering through the air above the abyss and falling into an inaccessible ravine in the wild depths of the forest: he turned his face to us with a bitter smile and said: “See friends,—that is fame!”

In March and April the Slovaks of America had the pleasure of welcoming two delegates of the Slovak Parliamentary Club, the Rev. Ladislav Moyš, until recently chief of the Uzhorod District, and John Pocisk, member of the National Assembly.

While the Czechs have had a good many visitors during the past year, some of them with various official missions, the Slovaks of America had to be satisfied until now with reports of their own delegates as to conditions in the old country. Their only visitors from abroad were two men who came last winter to agitate for the policy of separation from the Czechs; they were not very successful in their object, but they managed to create some ill feeling and squabbles, especially in Slovak Catholic churches.

Though they claimed to represent the Slovak People’s (Catholic) party, they were repudiated by it, and the two visitors who arrived in March brought credentials from the Slovak Club in which all the Slovak political parties are represented. The Rev. Ladislav Moyš is a Roman Catholic priest who has ben a Slovak patriot during the days of MayarMagyar [sic] rule, when to be a good Slovak involved much persecution. Upon the overthrow of MayarMagyar [sic] rule he was placed in charge of one of the counties of Slovakia from which position he resigned prior to his mission to America. His companion John Pocisk is a workingman of Bratislava, a leader of the Slovak social democratic party. This partnership and good comradeship of a Catholic priest and a socialist leader is typical of conditions in the Czechoslovak Republic, where men of the most divergent political and religious views heartily co-operate with each other for the good of their country.

Father Moyš and Mr. Pocisk spoke practically every night since their arrival in March, and always to crowded meetings of their countrymen who were eager to hear from eye-witnesses a trustworthy account of the present conditions in Slovakia. They told their countrymen with reference to relations of Czechs and Slovaks that the Czechs had always ben ready to agree to any political demand of the Slovaks; but the Slovak leaders realized that only close union with Czech brothers would preserve the Slovaks from the aggressive designs of the Magyars. So while all local affairs in Slovakia are completely in the hands of the Slovaks themselves, it was not thought desirable to erect Slovakia into a separate province with its own diet, as the Slovaks of America originally planned it.

At a meeting of the Slovak League, held in Pittsburgh on April 9, a report to the same effect was made by Albert Mamatey, president of the League, with the result that the Slovak League approved of the manner in which the leaders of the Slovak nation arranged their relations with the Czechs. Thus the danger of a misunderstanding between the two branches of the Czechoslovak nation which the Magyars zealously tried to bring about has been fortunately done away with.