And now this man is a landed proprietor, and I—a landless one!
Having been rejected by the schoolmaster and the butcher, I was considered a hopeless subject, and left to my own devices. What should I do at home? From morning till evening there was not wherewithal to stain my teeth; so for want of better employment, I began to look about the village. This certainly did not require much genius, for our house was on an eminence, from whence we had a view of the whole place; and when I mounted the great corn-stack in our yard, I could see directly into some of our neighbours' courts.
Here it was that I became initiated in certain hidden mysteries,—for example, how some of our village dames, who would launch forth on holidays all smartness and finery, were up to their elbows in dirt at home, and to their knees in mud—their heads vying with those unowned hay-stacks which are kicked at by every passing colt; while their lips, which were so daintily prim on holiday occasions that one could scarcely believe them capable of pronouncing the letter R, now raised the very dust on the roads with their abuse.
Then there was a house which had two doors to it; and whenever the goodman made his exit at the one door, somebody else entered by the other.
At another house, whenever the master came home late, his wife laid his dinner outside, upon the millstone table, with the servants; and the best of the matter was, that with this too familiar exception, he was held in vast respect by the whole household.
All this was very well to contemplate from a distance; but I happened at last to stumble upon something, a nearer view of which would have been by no means disagreeable to me.
Our next neighbour was my excellent uncle, Gergely Sonkolyi. His house was pretty ancient; and I remember, in my childish days, pulling the reeds[49] out of the roof to look for sugar. In those days the walls were painted partly blue and partly yellow; but afterwards the old man had them all rough-cast, and then it was not necessary to paint them again.
[49] Reeds—nad. Cane sugar is called nad czukor.
The house lay below the garden, and there were little plots before the windows, which were always filled with bouquets of musk and carrot flowers; and from a square hole in the roof sundry bunches of pepper blushed forth, in the warlike vicinity of an outstretched scythe.
Several large mulberry trees in the court-yard formed a roosting-place for the poultry; and opposite the kitchen door was the entrance to the wine-cellar, over which hung a variety of pumpkins. Beyond this was a large pigeon-house, farther on a pig-sty, then a two-yard measure, then a draw-well; while various implements of industry appeared in the perspective—such as ploughs, harrows, waggons, &c. And if to all these I add nine dogs, two speckled bullocks, and a flock of geese, I have before me a very perfect view of my Uncle Sonkolyi's court-yard.