Page:The grandmother; a story of country life in Bohemia.pdf/18

12 authors. The chief of these were Erben, Tyl, Chelakovsky, Nebesky, and Chejka.

The last named gentleman proved of the greatest service to her. He saw that she was introduced among the most cultivated ladies, provided the way for some culture in art, and induced her husband to engage for her a Bohemian teacher, which he not only willingly did, but himself began to study the language. These were happy and profitable days for the author, but they were of short duration. In 1845, her husband was again transferred, this time to Domazlitz (Taus). A new field of labor was now open to her. She found abundant material to work up, and during this time she wrote: Pictures from Domazlitz, Fables, Karla, and The Mountain Village.

Madame Nemec's experience at Domazlitz was somewhat singular. She delineated the life of the people so faithfully that some of the tradesmen, imagining that she was holding them up for ridicule, tried to rouse the people against her. Charles Havlichek took her part, and so ably defended her in the papers that the people turned to her with greater love than before. She tried to instruct them through conversation, read to them, and lent them books, and they appreciated her kind labors, followed her from village to village, until the police interfered, thinking that she was propagating ideas hostile to the government. While at Domazlitz, she contracted the dread disease, consumption, so that her future work was done under great disadvantages.

In 1847, M. Nemec was transferred to Neumark, on the Bavarian frontier. Here his wife's health was considerably improved. She wrote: "I feel much better and am becoming fleshy; perhaps it is because my life in these mountains is so peaceful. We sent the two elder boys to Domazlitz to school, and I am very lonesome; you know I live only in my children. O, heavens, soon the world will claim them and then my heart shall yearn for them