THE HARVEST FESTIVAL 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 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 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 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 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 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 Kosciuszko roamed first here and then there in his sorrow; he did not care much where he went to. At last he went to Paris. All the modern world was talking about the courage of the American colonists in taking up their struggle against the mother country. And it happened that during his stay in Paris, Kosciuszko chanced to meet our minister, Benjamin Franklin. When Franklin learned that Tadeusz was skilled in military tactics, and, furthermore, that it made no particular difference to him where he strayed, he at once offered to give him a letter to Washington. Our general was indeed glad to receive such a valuable aid, and appointed him colonel of engineers and placed him upon his staff. Soon his proficiency in fort-building won for him the honor of scientist of the American Army. He worked by the side of Washington for eight years, until he was no Another Polack, Count Casimir Pulaski, also served us well in our early struggles; he was killed at the battle of Savannah in 1779. Henryk Sienkiewicz has given us some wonderful masterpieces in literature, and there are countless other Polish authors who might be mentioned, but they are too numerous and one is not as familiar with their works as with those of Sienkiewicz. We may linger no longer. The Christmas season approaches, when we must return to our own again. Homewards we turn our steps, with intense regret. We leave behind us the flat, broad plains of Lekh, we recross the Continent, THE END. |