and I thought of the roast goose which mother had packed away in my
multicolored bag. I reached for the bag, but, alas! the goose was gone.
A fellow passenger, who sat near me, assured me that he saw one of the
young theologians carry the goose away while the other theologians
engaged me in conversation, and not knowing to whom the bags belonged,
he thought nothing of the incident. Besides, how could any one suspect
a student of theology? “Shades of St. Sava,” said I, “what kind of
orthodoxy will these future apostles of your faith preach to the Serbs
of Banat?” “Ah, my boy,” said an elderly lady who heard my exclamation,
“do not curse them; they did it just out of innocent mischief. This
experience will be worth many a roast goose to you; it will teach you
that in a world of strangers you must always keep one eye on what you
have and with the other eye look out for things that you do not have.”
She was a most sympathetic peasant woman, who probably had seen my
dramatic parting with father and mother on the steamboat landing. I
took her advice, and during the rest of my journey I never lost sight
of my multicolored bags and of my yellow sheepskin coat.
* * * * *
The sight of Budapest, as the boat approached it on the following day,
nearly took my breath away. At the neighborhood gatherings in Idvor
I had heard many a story about the splendor of the emperor’s palace
on the top of the mountain at Buda, and about the wonders of a bridge
suspended in air across the Danube and connecting Buda with Pest. Many
legends were told in Idvor concerning these wonderful things. But what
I saw with my own eyes from the deck of that steamboat surpassed all
my expectations. I was overawed, and for a moment I should have been
glad to turn back and retrace my journey to Idvor. The world outside
of Idvor seemed too big and too complicated for me. But as soon as I
landed my courage returned. With the yellow sheepskin coat on my back,
the black sheepskin cap on my head, and the multicolored bags firmly
grasped in my hands, I started out to find the railroad-station. A
husky Serb passed by and, attracted by my sheepskin coat and cap and
the multicolored bags, suddenly stopped and addressed me in Serbian. He
lived in Budapest, he said, and his glad eye and hand assured me that
a sincere friend was speaking to me. He helped me with the bags and
stayed with me until he deposited me in the train that was to take me
to Prague. He cautioned me that at about four o’clock in the morning
my train would reach Gaenserndorf (Goosetown), and that there I should
get out and get another train which would take me to Prague. The name
of this town brought back to memory my goose which had disappeared at
Karlovci, and gloomy forebodings disturbed my mind and made me a little
anxious.
* * * * *
This was the first railroad-train that I had ever seen. It disappointed
me; the legendary speed of trains about which I had heard so much in
Idvor was not there. When the whistle blew and the conductor shouted
“Fertig!” (Ready!), I shut my eyes and waited anxiously, expecting to
be shot forward at a tremendous speed. But the train started leisurely
and, to my great disappointment, never reached the speeds which I
expected. It was a cold October night; the third-class compartment had
only one other passenger, a fat Hungarian whom I could not understand,
although he tried his best to engage me in a conversation. My sheepskin
coat and cap made me feel warm and comfortable; I fell asleep, and
never woke up until the rough conductor pulled me off my seat and
ordered me out.
“Vienna, last stop,” he shouted.
“But I was going to Prague,” I said.
“Then you should have changed at Gaenserndorf, you idiot!” answered
the conductor, with the usual politeness of Austrian officials when
they see a Serb before them. “But why didn’t you wake me up at
Gaenserndorf?” I protested. He flared up and made a gesture as if about
to box my ears, but suddenly he changed his mind and substituted a
verbal thrust at my pride. “You little fool of a Serbian swineherd, do
you expect an imperial official to assist you in your lazy habits you
sleepy mutton-head?”
“Excuse me,” I said with an air of wounded pride, “I am not a Serbian
swineherd; I am a son of a brave military frontiersman, and I am going
to the famous schools of Prague.”
He softened, and told me that I should have to go back to Gaenserndorf
after paying my fare to that place and back. When I informed him that I
had no money for extra travelling expenses, he beckoned to me to come
along, and after a while we stood in the presence of what I thought to
be a very great official. He had a lot of gold braid on his collar and
sleeves and on his cap, and he looked as stern and as serious as if the
cares of the whole empire rested upon his shoulders.
“Take off your cap, you ill-mannered peasant! Don’t you know how to
behave in the presence of your superiors?” he blurted out, addressing
me. I dropped my multicolored bags, took off my yellow sheepskin coat
in order to cover the bags, and then took off my black sheepskin cap,
and saluted him in the regular fashion of a military frontiersman. I
thought that he might be the emperor himself and, if so, I wondered if
he had ever heard of my trampling upon his yellow-black flag at that
May-day festival in Panchevo. Finally, I screwed up my courage and
apologized by saying:
“Your gracious Majesty will pardon my apparent lack of respect to my
superiors, but this is to me a world of strangers, and the anxiety
about my belongings kept my hands busy with the bags and prevented
me from taking off my cap when I approached your serene Highness.” I
noticed that several persons within hearing distance were somewhat
amused by this interview, and particularly an elderly looking couple, a
lady and a gentleman:
“Why should you feel anxious about your bags?” said the great official.
“You are not in the savage Balkans, the home of thieves; you are in
Vienna, the residence of his Majesty, the Emperor of Austria-Hungary.”
“Yes,” said I, “but two days ago my roast goose was stolen from one of
these bags within his Majesty’s realm, and my father told me that all
the rights and privileges of the Voyvodina and of the military frontier
were stolen right here in this very Vienna.”
“Ah, you little rebel, do you expect that this sort of talk will
get you a free transportation from Gaenserndorf to Vienna and back
again? Restrain your rebellious tongue or I will give you a free
transportation back to your military frontier, where rebels like you
ought to be behind lock and key.”
At this juncture the elderly looking couple engaged him in
conversation, and after a while the gold-braided mogul informed me that
my ticket from Vienna to Prague by the short route was paid for, and
that I should proceed. The rude conductor, who had called me a Serbian
swineherd a little while before, led me to the train and ushered me
politely into a first-class compartment. Presently the elderly looking
couple entered and greeted me in a most friendly, almost affectionate,
manner. They encouraged me to take off my sheepskin coat and make
myself comfortable, and assured me that my bags would be perfectly safe.
* * * * *
Their German speech had a strange accent, and their manner and
appearance were entirely different from anything that I had ever seen
before. But they inspired confidence. Feeling hungry, I took my loaf
of snowy-white bread out of my bag, and with my herdsman’s knife with
a long wooden handle I cut off two slices and offered them to my new
friends. “Please, take it,” said I; “it was prepared by my mother’s
hands for my long journey.” They accepted my hospitality and ate the
bread and pronounced it excellent, the best bread they had ever tasted.
I told them how it was made by mixing leaf-lard and milk with the
finest wheat flour, and when I informed them that I knew a great deal
about cooking and that I had learned it by watching my mother, the
lady appeared greatly pleased. The gentleman, her husband, asked me
questions about farming and taking care of animals, which I answered
readily, quoting my father as my authority. “You had two splendid
teachers, your father and your mother,” they said; “do you expect to
find better teachers in Prague?” I told them briefly what had sent
me to Prague, mentioning particularly that some people thought that
I had outgrown the schools not only of my native village but also of
Panchevo, but that in reality the main reason was because the Hungarian
officials did not want me in Panchevo on account of my showing a strong
inclination to develop into a rebellious nationalist. My new friends
gave each other a significant look and said something in a language
which I did not understand. They told me that it was English, and added
that they were from America.
“America!” said I, quivering with emotion. “Then you must know a lot
about Benjamin Franklin and his kite, and about Lincoln, the American
Prince Marko.”
This exclamation of mine surprised them greatly and furnished the
topic for a lively conversation of several hours, until the train had
reached Prague. It was conducted in broken German, but we understood
each other perfectly. I told them of my experience with Franklin’s
theory of lightning, and of its clash with my father’s St. Elijah
legend, and answered many of their questions relating to my calling
Lincoln an American Prince Marko. I quoted from several Serbian ballads
relating to Prince Marko which I had learned from Baba Batikin, and
at their urgent request described with much detail the neighborhood
gatherings in Idvor. They returned the compliment by telling me stories
of Benjamin Franklin, of Lincoln, and of America, and urged me to read
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a translation of which I discovered some time
afterward. When the train reached Prague they insisted that I be their
guest at their Prague hotel, called the Blue Star, for a day, at least,
until I found my friends in Prague. I gladly accepted, and spent a
delightful evening with them. The sweetness of their disposition was
an unfathomable riddle to me. The riddle, however, was solved several
years later.
* * * * *
I mentioned above that the first sight of Budapest nearly took my
breath away. The first view of Prague filled me with a strange
religious fervor. The ancient gates, surmounted by towers with
wonderful stone carvings and inscriptions; the lofty domes, crowning
mediæval cathedrals, the portals of which were bristling with beautiful
images of saints; the historic public buildings, each of which told a
story of the old glories of Bohemia’s kingdom; the ancient stone bridge
across the Moldava River, supporting statues of Christian martyrs;
the royal palace on the hill of Hradchin, which seemed to rise way up
above the clouds--all these, and many other wonderful things, made me
feel that it was places like Prague which St. Sava visited when he
deserted his royal parents and went to the end of the world to seek new
knowledge. I saw then why the protoyeray of Panchevo had suggested that
I go to Prague; I even began to suspect that he expected the influence
of Prague to turn my attention to theology. I think now that it would
have done so if it had not been for that unpleasant goose incident at
Karlovci. Besides, there was another influence at Prague, which was
more powerful than any other influence in the Austrian Empire at that
time.
* * * * *
The sights of Prague interested me more than its famous schools, which
I was to enter and delayed entering. But finally I was enrolled, and
the boys in the school scrutinized me with a puzzled expression, as
if they could not make out what country or clime I came from. When
they found out that I hailed from the Serb military frontier, all
uncertainty vanished, and I knew exactly where I stood. The German
boys became very cold, the Czech boys greeted me in their own tongue
and hugged me when by my Serbian answer I proved not only that I
understood them but also that I expected them to understand my Serbian
greeting. They were all nationalists to the core and did their best to
make me join their ranks, which, after some reluctance, I finally did.
I showed them then two letters from protoyeray Zhivkovich introducing
me to Rieger and to Palacky, the great apostles of Panslavism and of
nationalism in Bohemia. From that day on I was one of their young
revolutionary set, and henceforth school lessons looked tame and lost
most of their charm to me.
* * * * *
The German victory in France two years prior to that time, resulting as
it did in the creation of a united Germany, had encouraged Teutonism to
run riot wherever it met a current opposing it, as it did in Prague.
Nationalism in Bohemia was a reaction against Austrian Teutonism in
those days, just as it was a reaction against Magyarism in Voyvodina
and in the military frontier. Hardly a day passed without serious
clashes between the Czech nationalist boys and their German classmates.
That which made my stay in Panchevo impossible met me in Prague in an
even more violent form. Loyal to the traditions of the Serbian military
frontiersmen, I liked nothing better than a good fight, and I had the
physique and the practice, gained in the pasturelands of Idvor, to lick
any German boy of my age or even older. The German pupils feared me,
and the German teachers condemned what they called my revolutionary
tendencies, and threatened to send me back to Idvor. As time went on,
I began to wish that they would expel me and give me a good excuse to
return to Idvor. I missed the wide horizon of the plains of Banat in
the narrow streets of Prague. My little bedroom in a garret, the only
living quarters that I could afford, was a sad contrast to my mode of
life on the endless plains of Banat, where for six weeks each summer
I had lived under the wide canopy of heaven, watching the grazing
oxen, gazing upon the countless stars at night, and listening to the
sweet strains of the Serbian flute. The people I met on the streets
were puffed up with Teutonic pride or with official arrogance; they
had none of the gentle manliness and friendliness of the military
frontiersmen. The teachers looked to me more like Austrian gendarmes
than like sympathetic friends. They cared more for my sentiments toward
the emperor and for my ideas about nationalism than for my ideas
relating to God and his beautiful world of life and light. Not one of
them reminded me of Kos, the Slovenian, or of protoyeray Zhivkovich in
Panchevo. Race antagonism was at that time the ruling passion. If it
had not been for the affectionate regard which the Czech boys and their
parents had for me I should have felt most lonesome; from Banat to
Prague was too sudden a change for me.
* * * * *
Another circumstance I must mention now which helped to brace me up. I
delivered, after many months of delay, my letters of introduction to
Rieger and to Palacky. I saw their pictures, I read about them, and
finally I heard them address huge nationalist meetings. They were great
men, I thought, and I could not screw up sufficient courage to call
on them, as the protoyeray wished me to do, and waste their precious
time on my account. But when I received a letter from the protoyeray
in Panchevo asking why I had not delivered the letters of introduction
he had given me, I made the calls. Rieger looked like my father: dark,
stern, reserved, powerful of physique, with a wonderful luminosity in
his eyes. He gave me coffee and cake, consuming a generous supply of
them himself. When I kissed his hand, bidding him good-by, he gave
me a florin for pocket-money, patted me on the cheek, and assured me
that I could easily come up to the protoyeray’s expectations and
surprise my teachers if I would only spend more time on my books and
less on my nationalist chums. This suggestion and indirect advice
made me very thoughtful. Palacky was a gentle, smooth-faced, old
gentleman, who looked to me then as if he knew everything that men
had ever known, and that much study had made him pale and delicate.
He was much interested in my description of the life and customs of
my native village, and when I mentioned St. Sava, he drew a parallel
between this saint and Yan Huss, the great Czech patriot and divine,
who was burned at the stake in 1415 at Constance because he demanded
a national democratic church in Bohemia. He gave me a book in which I
could read all about Huss and the Hussite wars and about the one-eyed
Zhizhka, the great Hussite general. He gave me no coffee nor cake,
probably because his health did not permit him to indulge in eatables
between meals, but assured me of assistance if I should ever need it. I
eagerly read the book about Yan Huss and the Hussite wars, and became
a more enthusiastic nationalist than ever before. I felt that Rieger’s
influence pulled me in one direction, and that Palacky encouraged me
to persist in the opposite direction which I had selected under the
influence of the spirit of Czech nationalism.
* * * * *
In my letters to my elder sisters, which they read to father and
mother, I described with much detail the beauties and wonders of
Prague, my receptions and talks with Rieger and Palacky, and elaborated
much the parallel between St. Sava and Yan Huss to which Palacky had
drawn my attention, and which I expected would please my mother; but
I never mentioned Rieger’s advice that I stick to books and leave the
nationalist propaganda of the boys alone. I never during my whole
year’s stay in Prague sent a report home on my school work, because I
never did more than just enough to prevent my dropping to the lower
grade. My mother and the protoyeray in Panchevo expected immeasurably
more. Hence, I never complained about the smallness of the allowance
which my parents could give me, and, therefore, they did not appeal to
my Panchevo friends for the additional help which they had promised.
I felt that I had no right to make such an appeal, because I did not
devote myself entirely to the work for which I was sent to Prague.
* * * * *
While debating with myself whether to follow Rieger’s advice and leave
nationalism in the hands of more experienced people and devote myself
to my lessons only, an event occurred which was the turning-point in my
life. I received a letter from my sister informing me that my father
had died suddenly after a very brief illness. She told me also that my
father had had a premonition that he would die soon and never see me
again when, a year before, he bade me good-by on the steamboat landing.
I understood then the meaning of the tears which on that day of parting
I had seen roll down his cheeks for the first time in my life. I
immediately informed my mother that I wanted to return to Idvor and
help her take care of my father’s land. But she would not listen, and
insisted that I stay in Prague, where I was seeing and learning so many
wonderful things. I knew quite well what a heavy burden my schooling
would be to her, and my school record did not entitle me to expect the
protoyeray to make his promise of assistance good. I decided to find
a way of relieving my mother of any further burdens so far as I was
concerned.
* * * * *
One day I saw on the last page of an illustrated paper an advertisement
of the Hamburg-American line, offering steerage transportation
from Hamburg to New York for twenty-eight florins. I thought of my
mellow-hearted American friends of the year before who bought a
first-class railroad-ticket for me from Vienna to Prague, and decided
on the spot to try my fortune in the land of Franklin and Lincoln as
soon as I could save up and otherwise scrape up money enough to carry
me from Prague to New York. My books, my watch, my clothes, including
the yellow sheepskin coat and the black sheepskin cap, were all sold
to make up the sum necessary for travelling expenses. I started out
with just one suit of clothes on my back and a few changes of linen,
and a red Turkish fez which nobody would buy. And why should anybody
going to New York bother about warm clothes? Was not New York much
farther south than Panchevo, and does not America suggest a hot climate
when one thinks of the pictures of naked Indians so often seen? These
thoughts consoled me when I parted with my sheepskin coat. At length I
came to Hamburg, ready to embark but with no money to buy a mattress
and a blanket for my bunk in the steerage. Several days later my ship,
the _Westphalia_, sailed--on the twelfth day of March, 1874. My mother
received several days later my letter, mailed in Hamburg, telling her
in most affectionate terms that, in my opinion, I had outgrown the
school, the teachers, and the educational methods of Prague, and was
about to depart for the land of Franklin and Lincoln, where the wisdom
of people was beyond anything that even St. Sava had ever known. I
assured her that with her blessing and God’s help I should certainly
succeed, and promised that I would soon return rich in rare knowledge
and in honors. The letter was dictated by the rosiest optimism that I
could invent. Several months later I found to my great delight that
my mother had accepted cheerfully this rosy view of my unexpected
enterprise.
* * * * *
[Illustration: THE VILLAGE CHURCH IN IDVOR]
The ship sailed with a full complement of steerage passengers, mostly
Germans. As we glided along the River Elbe the emigrants were all
on deck, watching the land as it gradually vanished from our sight.
Presently the famous German emigrant song rang through the air, and
with a heavy heart I took in the words of its refrain:
“Oh, how hard it would be to leave the homeland shores
If the hope did not live that soon we shall see them again.
Farewell, farewell, until we see you again.”
I did not wait for the completion of the song, but turned in, and in
my bare bunk I sought to drown my sadness in a flood of tears. Idvor,
with its sunny fields, vineyards, and orchards; with its grazing herds
of cattle and flocks of sheep; with its beautiful church-spire and
the solemn ringing of church-bells; with its merry boys and girls
dancing to the tune of the Serbian bagpipes the Kolo on the village
green--Idvor, with all the familiar scenes that I had ever seen there,
appeared before my tearful eyes, and in the midst of them I saw my
mother listening to my sister reading slowly the letter which I had
sent to her from Hamburg. Every one of these scenes seemed to start a
new shower of tears, which finally cleared the oppressiveness of my
spiritual atmosphere. I thought that I could hear my mother say to my
sister: “God bless him for his affectionate letter. May the spirit of
St. Sava guide him in the land beyond the seas! I know that he will
make good his promises.” Sadness deserted me then and I felt strong
again.
* * * * *