After arrangements had been made for Jozef to live with some distant relatives, his godfather bade him good-by.
"HE USED TO WANDER . . . TO THE FORTIFICATIONS"
"Learn all you can, the better to help your native land," he said to him in parting.
It was not long before Jozef felt quite at home. The boys at first teased him about his dialect, but it was such good-natured teasing that he did not mind it. Once when the teacher overheard them, he said:
"Do not care. Your language may not be as literary as ours, but it is softer and more musical, and hence much more pleasing."
Jozef became very fond of the city. With a "heretic" friend, he used to wander over the curiously arranged, toothed old streets, to the fortifications that still stand, or to the river that surrounds the city on three sides. Or they would stand and stare and discuss the statues of Jan Hus, the religious martyr, of his marvelously eloquent friend, Jerome of Prague, of Jan Zizka, and of Prokop the Great. These and many historic relics were in the odd, triple-gabled Town Hall, finished in 1521, in the big market square.
The statue of Zizka had an especial fascination for them. They could see him walking right there in the Square, surrounded by armed warriors, looking just as here represented, with expressive bent head, long mustache, and heavy fur coat over his shirt of mail. In one hand he held a sword, in the other, that terrible weapon that they knew was once called by the fanciful name of the morning star.
Besides the Town Hall there were other interesting irregularly built buildings, with peculiar ornamentation, in the Square. Before one of them still stood one of the stone tables on which the Taborites took communion in the open air.
How very different Bohemia seemed to him from Slovakia! Here every one was proud of his nationality, which despite heavy taxes and many other oppressions, the people had retained through the efforts of great unselfish leaders who ceaselessly battled for their rights. He forgot the humility that he used to feel when meeting a contemptuous Magyar. Soon he held his head as high as the Czech boys did when they came face to face with Germans who through wrong training, in their wicked conceit, looked upon every nationality not their own, as far below them. In Tabor this was not at all hard with all the voiceless eloquent teachers around that reminded of past greatness and resistance to injustice.