A July Holiday in Saxony, Bohemia, and Silesia

by Walter White

The hostess, meanwhile, chatted with me and set the table. She professed to admire the English, and thought it an honour that an Englishman had once slept a night in her house, "although he had to look into a book for all he wanted to say." She coincided entirely in the Saxon schoolmaster's opinion, that all best things came from England.

As the clock struck eleven in came half a dozen serving men and maidens, and sat down to dinner with the master and mistress. The dowager supplied them with soup, beef, a mountain of potato-dumplings, and cucumber salad, and ate her portion apart with undoubting appetite. An old beggar crept in and stood hat in hand imploring charity for God's sake! She scolded him for his intrusion, and then gave him a smoking hot dumpling and a word of sympathy, which he received and acknowledged with humble thanks and the sign of the cross.

It is a relief along this part of the road to see frequent hop plantations, and here and there rocks as richly red as the crimson cliffs of Sidmouth, while at rarer intervals a pale mass of sandstone on a distant hill-slope puts on the appearance of an enormous antediluvian fossil. I was pacing briskly along, enjoying a fresh breeze that had sprung up, when I heard a voice behind me: "Ach! at last. I saw you from far, and said to myself, Perhaps that is a journey-companion—let me overtake him."

Immediately a man, who walked as if he enjoyed the exercise, and wore what looked like his Sunday suit, came up to my side, and proposed to join company, so as to shorten the way with talk. We soon got through the preliminaries, and started topics enough to last all the rest of the day. The stranger notified himself as a Mechaniker from Neudeck, going to Prague on business for his master. He, too, had much to say in praise of England. He had once worked with an Englishman, a certain James, or Ya-mes, as he pronounced it, and had ever since held him in the highest esteem and admiration. "That was a man!" he exclaimed; "if all Englishmen are the same, no wonder their nation is so great."

English files also were not less praiseworthy—a fact of which Sheffield ought to be proud, seeing that her handicraft has often been reproached of late. "To dance," said the Mechaniker, "is not more pleasure than to file with an English file. How it bites, and lasts so long! Even an old one that has been thrown away for months is better than a German file. One is honest steel—the other is too much like lead." Some folk will, perhaps, feel surprised by this scrap of experimental testimony in favour of Hallamshire.

We talked about wages. The Mechaniker's earnings were six hundred florins a year; a small sum, as it seems, to English notions for a skilled workman in machinery—one held in high consideration by his master. Ordinary workmen get one-third less; he was, therefore, well content, and told me he could spare something for the savings bank, but not so much as formerly, owing to the increased price of provisions.

So with sundry discourse we came to Kruschowitz, where we dined, looking out on thick belts of fruit-trees, that embower the village, and relieve the pale green of little plantations of acacias that show here and there among the bright-red roofs. Most of the houses exhibit the Czechish style, which shuns height and dispenses with an upper story. Then we went on at an after-dinner pace to Rentsch, where, striking into the old road to Prague, now but little frequented, we shortened the distance by four or five miles. All Czechish now, both to eye and ear. A difference is perceptible in the fields, the implements, sheds, and vehicles; they are not so neat or workmanlike in appearance as in the German districts, and yet the broad crops of wheat, already turning yellow, betoken glad abundance.

Now we found pleasant footpaths through the beech-woods that border the road, and enjoyed the cool shade and the sound of rustling leaves. The men we met had a slouching gait, and the women, wearing coarse, baggy cotton stockings, and flimsy cotton gowns, and shabby kerchiefs on their heads, were unmistakable dowdies—an appearance which has come to be considered essentially Celtic. However, they failed not to salute us with their "dobrýtro" (good day) as we passed.

The aspect of Neu Straschitz, the next village on our way, shows how we are getting into the heart of the country—the land of the Czechs. Wide streets, which make the low whitewashed houses look still lower than they are; a great, uneven square, patched here and there with ragged grass, bestrewn with rough logs of timber, ornamented at one side by a row of saplings, unhappy looking, as if pining for the rank of trees; on the other by a statue of St. John Nepomuk. Very lifeless! No merry noise of children in summer evening gambols; no fathers and mothers chatting in the cool lengthening shadows. The only living creatures are a man, a woman, and a dog, all three as far apart as possible. There is nothing stirring even around the Bezirksamt or the church.

Glazed windows are few: an opening in the wall, with a hinged shutter, suffices for most of the houses. And for door they have a big archway closed by heavy wooden gates, looking very inhospitable. Here and there one of these gates stands a little open, and you may get a peep at the interior, a square court, enclosed by stable, barn, and dwelling, heaped with manure and ugly rubbish. No notion here, you will say, of the fitness of things. Look at the wagon—a basket on wheels—the wheelbarrow, the rakes, huddled away anyhow, as if they were just as well in one place as another. Perhaps they are. Quaint old Fuller says of the Devonshire cotters of his day, "Vain it is for any to search their houses, being a work beneath the pains of a sheriff, and above the power of any constable." You will, perhaps, say the same here. Look in-doors! the same slovenliness prevails. The room would be just as comfortable, or rather uncomfortable, if chairs and table changed places; if the higgledy-piggledy at one end were shifted to the other. The condition of the utensils is by no means unimpeachable; and repelled by the pervading odour, you will not be less thankful than proud that your lot is not cast among the Czechs.