Pretty Michal

A FREE TRANSLATION OF MAURUS JÓKAI'S ROMANCE A SZÉP MIKHÁL
BY R. N. BAIN
NEW YORK CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY 104 & 106 Fourth Avenue
Copyright, 1892, by CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY.
All rights reserved.
THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J.

Wherein is shown how sagely the Rev. Master Fröhlich brought up his motherless daughter, pretty Michal.
In the days when the Turkish Sultan ruled in Hungary as far as Ersekujvar and Eger, the German Kaiser from Eger to the Zips country, and George Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, from Zips to the Szeklerland—all three of whom were perpetually fighting among themselves, sometimes two against one and sometimes all together indiscriminately, so that the inhabitants had a very lively time of it—in those days (somewhere about 1650) the learned and reverend Master David Fröhlich was the pride of the Keszmár Lyceum and Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy there. Master Fröhlich knew everything which could be reasonably expected of a man. He knew how to calculate solar and lunar eclipses. He knew how to take the old town-clock to pieces when it got out of order and put it together again. He could fix the weather for a whole year beforehand. He understood the aureus calculus and could cast a horoscope with any man living. He knew by heart which trades could be carried on best in each of the twelve months. He had at his fingers' ends the arcana and secret properties of all herbs and plants, could explain sympathies and antipathies, nay, he could be implicitly trusted in the manufacture of amulets.
But his most difficult science was that of which we are now about to speak.
He had one beautiful daughter whom he had brought up without the help of a mother, and that, surely, is a feat of which any man might be proud! His wife had died on the very day on which she had given birth to the child, and the widower had forthwith steadily set before himself the problem of educating the girl without the slightest female intervention.