"When I first started making my rounds twenty years ago," he said, "I used to stop for a day or two with my wife's cousin in Praha (Prague). Then the Germans had succeeded in getting all the business into their hands; but now the Czechs have got it all back again. The banks, too, are almost all Czech. There is hardly a German sign to be seen anywhere. Every street has its own Czech name; but how the Czechs had to fight for this, and how sore the Germans are over it! The Czech believes in fighting for the right, he believes in educating his children, he is willing to make any sacrifice that will make Bohemia his own again. We're a different people; we are too ignorant to know how to go about things, and when we do know we're so mild we don't do it."
"Much good fighting would do us!" remarked Stefan the blacksmith. The other men laughed. "Come and show us how," they said.
"I don't mean fist fighting," the tinker returned half angrily. "I mean fighting with brains. Why can't we—"
"That's all right," interrupted a young man, his face all aflame, as he stepped into the ring. "But what chance have we to develop our brains when we haven't a single Higher School where the Slovak language is taught? When every opportunity is cut off from one if he somehow manages to educate himself, unless he turns traitor to his mother tongue and swears that he is a Magyar? Don't I know? Didn't I hope to work myself up into a position where I could serve my nation? And you know my record. Imprisonment and imprisonment and imprisonment. The Czechs are helping themselves, but no progress will come for us until the world at large will awaken to its duty of preventing tyranny and exploitation."
"True!" muttered many of the men; and then slipped away one by one as some one pointed out the Notary approaching in the distance.
An old woman now engrossed the tinker's attention. She was quite a character in the village and some of the people would have agreed that she was the chief character. No one called her by her name. She was "Aunty" to everybody for miles around. In sickness and death, in birth and rejoicings, her advice was sought, even sometimes before that of the village priest. She generally carried a basket of herbs on her arm, for she was always hunting for some or ready to distribute some to others. She knew their virtues as no one else did.
Ruzena chose that moment to bring out an earthen pot to be wired. She hoped the tinker would be so busy talking to "Aunty" that he would forget to indulge in his favorite pastime of teasing.
But no sooner did she come up than he looked at her seriously to ask: "Have you caught any birds this year by sprinkling something on their tails?" And when Ruzena smilingly shook her head and said shyly, "None," he wanted to know where a dog goes when he follows his nose.
When at last he handed back her pot so skillfully mended that it was, as he claimed, as good as new, he said more seriously than before:
"His lordship in the next village has commanded me to bring him a new kind of strap, and I think that one of your braids of hair will be just the thing for it. Stand still just a moment while I find my shears."