And now our vacation is about ended. The year is drawing to a close. Harvest time has arrived; the crops are stacked up in the fields to be garnered in.
The peasants have finished their year's work out-of-doors. They have served their master's interests well; all that remains is his inspection to see that all is satisfactory, and his approval that they earned their wages.
Mr. Ostrowski, accompanied by his good wife, left their home upon the hill and walked towards the great fields of yellow grain. It was not permitted the peasant to garner in these sheaves until the master had passed by. Suddenly, they were seized from behind. They were seized gently but forcibly. While one young man held the wrists of the mistress, and others the wrists of the master, other peasants picked up strands of the golden straw and assisted in securely binding their captives. The master and mistress pleaded for their liberty, but their captors were adamant. No ransom, no liberty. At length, after promises of ransom, the peasants unbound their victims, the money was paid over, and the master and mistress were free. Laughing, they passed on their way across the field, while the merry peasants then began to stack the golden grain upon their carts and haul it away to the barns.
It is a very pretty custom, this one of the Harvest Festival; and master and laborer enter into the spirit of it with keen zest. It but endears their patron to them the more that he permits this privilege; the ransom is not more than a few pennies; but the master must pay it before he may regain his liberty. All over the estate, from one field to the other, the same ceremony is indulged in for the harvest crops.
What merry-making there is in the village during the rest of the day and all through the evening, after the crops are safely stowed away for the winter!
The fairest maiden of the village is the queen of the day. She wears her white dress with a queenly air, too; and holds her proud head high, crowned with flowers. Forming in line, the queen at the head, the bridesmaids following, and then the other villagers in the order of their importance, the gay procession marches slowly up the hill, singing folk songs as they mount. Their sweet, musical voices announce their arrival long beforehand to the mistress of the dwór. She meets them at the porch with graciousness. The queen kneels for her mistress' blessing, and once more they return down the hill toward the village, but now they are enriched with a quantity of small money, with which they straightway proceed to set up a supper, after which they dance the rest of the hours away. They have good cause to be light-hearted, for they know their work is finished for the season, and there are full barns for the winter.
And we have now spent a full year in the delightful, quaint land of Lekh; dear Poland, from whose brow has never vanished the one cloud that mars it. It has learned its tragic lesson too late, that what it does not sow it may not reap. The nobles had been too much enwrapped in their own gayety, in their exclusiveness, to turn their hands to the task of setting things straight. The bourgeoisie were neither of one class nor another; they could not afford to compromise themselves by turning either way, consequently they turned neither, and were useless as aids. The peasants were raised in ignorance, were overburdened and kept constantly under the leash, so to speak, and while their strength might have saved the country, they had not the brain-power to solve a means therefor. So that neither of the three brothers being able to decide which should blow upon the flute, as neither class would take upon itself to save the land, so they now await the decision. In the meantime, Poland belongs to the three conquering nations, the Russians, the Austrians and the Germans, neither of which the Polacks are devoted to.
And yet, with all its indecision, Poland has given the world some glorious men and women. Copernicus, the world-famed astrologer, was born in the city of Thorn upon the River Vistula, on February 19, 1473. Chopin, the great musical composer, was the son of a Polish woman, although he is buried in France. Marcella Sembrich, Edouard De Reszke and his brother Jean, of grand opera fame, Helena Modjeska, our beloved actress, now passed away, and Jan Paderewski, the celebrated pianist, are all Polacks. And we Americans have much to be indebted for to a great Polish soldier. You may not even know his name; had it not been for Tadeusz Kosciuszko, I doubt very much whether Washington, our dearly beloved George Washington, would have proven so successful in his endeavors for independence.
It is a long way from Warsaw in Poland to the American colonies; especially was it so in the year 1776, when transportation was not what it now is. But Tadeusz did not consider distance or hardship. He was willing to go anywhere, so long as it would take him from the place where he had suffered so keenly. For back in Poland, Tadeusz loved a beautiful girl. The father of this young lady did not approve of Kosciuszko as a lover. He feared the two might elope, which they had really planned to do. Therefore, he carried off his daughter in the dead of night, so that Tadeusz never saw her again.