Here among the Slovaks, the seed sown by the American missionary at home and abroad has brought forth more vital fruit, perhaps, than on the home soil. Although these Slovak disciples have gone out to save only this one or that one, they are helping to save a nation and are lifting a race out of degeneration.
Nominally, Jan Chorvat was a teacher in the Slovak language to our expedition; and to learn the more effectually, my students often went with him on his tours from village to village. As they walked, he explained to them the grammar
and enriched their vocabulary. How much of the difficult Slovak language they will remember when they come to their task in Pennsylvania, I do not know; but they can never forget the lessons he taught them by his singleness of purpose, his devotion to his people, and his fearless approach to those who he thought needed his admonition. Those students will surely remember that “Though they speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, it profiteth nothing.”
The last day of our stay in Hungary brought us early to a village at the foot of the Tatra mountains, the village of Czorba. Leaving our uncomfortable third-class carriage in which we had spent the night, we were quickly revived by the ozone-laden mountain air, and by the marvellous sight which greeted our eyes. Here were the giant mountains of Hungary which she has proudly pictured highest on her escutcheon.
That which most quickened us, however, as a group of strangers, was the greeting extended to us by three men waiting in the early dawn. They had come many miles on foot to meet us, and carried huge loaves of rye bread and bottles of milk for our refreshment. They were to guide us to the top of the mountain. The three men belonged to three antagonistic races of Hungary, and we were Americans, a conglomerate of races; Teutonic, Semitic, and Celtic. Together we broke bread, prayed, sang, and exchanged thoughts about the vital things of life.
The man who appeared to be the leader of the group, the brightest and happiest of the three, the one with the largest outlook on life, was a Slovak who had found his vision and his happiness in America. He worked in a blacksmith’s shop in Torrington, Conn. Here some one with a passion for common men ministered to him and led him from drunkenness to sobriety, and from his coarse animal existence into fellowship with the divine. He returned home and is daily at his task of shoeing horses and mending broken ploughshares; but he never forgets that what carried him back among his people was his awakened passion for them.