"Yes; but in the old times——"
I bade him good-bye, and pursued my walk. Turning round just over the brow of the hill, I saw him still in the same spot, gazing after me. "Farewell, good friend!" he shouted, and strode away.
Half an hour later I came to a road-mender, who told me he earned twenty kreutzers a day, and was quite content therewith. He had a wife and child; never ate meat or drank beer; lived mostly on potatoes, and was, nevertheless, strong and healthy, and by no means inclined to quarrel with his lot. The road was a constant source of employment; and if at times bad weather kept him at home for a day or two, his pay went on all the same.
I mentioned my interview with the old peasant. "Ah!" he answered, laughing, "it is always so. No grumbler like a Bauer. All the world knows that peasants think everybody better off than themselves"—and down came his hammer with crashing force on a lump of granite. Wayside philosophy clearly had the best of it, and heartily approved the fable of the Mountain of Miseries which I narrated.
Every mile brings us more and more among the Czechs. Oval faces and arched eyebrows become more numerous, and women's talk sounds shrill and shrewish, as if angry or quarrelsome, as is remarked of the women in Caernarvonshire; and yet it is nothing more than friendly conversation. To a stranger the language sounds as unmusical as it is difficult; and to learn it—you may as well hope to master Chinese. Czechish names and handbills appear on the walls; the names of villages, with the usual topographical particulars, are written up in German and Czechish, of which behold a specimen:
| Ort und Gemeinde. | Misto á Obec. |
| Horzowitz. | |
| Bezirk Jechnitz. | Okres Jesenice. |
| Kreis Saaz. | Krái Zatéc. |
| Königr. Böhm. | Kral: Ceské. |
In some of the villages no one but the landlord of the best inn can speak German, and you have only your eyes by which to study the natives and their ways. For my own part, my Czechish vocabulary being foolishly short, I could not ask the villagers why they preferred sluttishness to tidiness, though I longed to do so. It comprised three words only: Piwo, Chleb, Máslo—Beer, Bread, Butter.
Crosses are frequent, erected at the corners where bye-roads branch off. Not the huge wooden things you see in Tyrol; but light iron crucifixes, graceful in form and brightly gilt, and mounted on a stone pedestal. Nearly all have been set up by private individuals to commemorate some family event: By the married Pair, you may read on one; Dedicated to the Honour of God, by two Sisters, on another; In Memory of my Daughter, by Peter Schmidt, Bauer, on a third—all apparently from some pious motive.
While eating a crust under the pretentious sign, Stadt Carlsbad, at Horosedl, I saw how the dowager hostess practised her domestic economy. She was preparing dinner for the family, after her manner, drawing her hand repeatedly across her nose, for the stove was hot and the day sultry. She sliced cucumbers with an instrument resembling a plane, sprinkled the slices with salt, then squeezed them well between her hands, and exposed them to the sun in a shallow basket, one of five or six which, woven almost as close and water-tight as calabashes, served her as dishes. Then she grated a lump of hard brown dough, and used the coarse grains to thicken the soup—a substitute for vermicelli common among the peasantry.