When a man wakes up in the morning and can’t quite make out where he is, and the first thing that catches his eyes as they wander inquiringly round an unfamiliar bedroom is an electric bell, and underneath it these words:

he may fairly be excused if he feels like a stranger in a strange land. It will probably dawn upon him that somewhere amid these printed specimens of an unknown tongue there is lurking a request that if he wants the waiter he will ring once; that if he requires the chambermaid he will ring twice; and that if he needs the services of the boots he will ring thrice. This is what gradually shaped itself in my mind when I woke up the other morning in Prague, and found myself face to face with the Bohemian or Czechish language.

My earliest recollections of Prague are associated with a piece of well-thumbed music which used to lie about on a piano, and was something to do with a battle. Later on it cropped up occasionally in the schoolroom in connection with a gentleman named Huss, who got into trouble early in the Fourteens; but the world-famous old town fairly burnt itself into my memory in the now almost forgotten lines of poor Prowse, ‘Nicholas’ of Fun:

It was not of the Bohemia over which Francis Josef reigns to-day that the young poet sang, but of that vaster Bohemia which in years gone by was the happy land of the children of art, of letters, and of song. ‘La Vie de BohÈme’ exists no more. The old Bohemians have turned their backs upon their tents, and live in stucco villas. They have crushed the clay pipe under the heels of their patent-leather boots, and taken to cigarettes. They have ceased to herd together in the bonds of brotherhood; they go into Society and eye each other superciliously when they get crushed together on the staircases of the nobility.

But, though the old rhyme has lost its reason, it was the one that came back to me first when I found myself in the real Prague of the true Bohemians. These Bohemians, too, have their song, though I doubt if that, too, has not grown old and a little out of fashion. The old national ditty, Kde domof mug, began something like this:

A beauteous land it undoubtedly is, but the language has peculiarities which are not calculated to make it grateful and comforting to the traveller who has to take it on after he is past his first youth.

When I arose and donned my clothes and oped my chamber-door in Prague to let in the ‘sklepnik’ with my coffee and brÖdchen, I had just two days to learn the language, see everything, and be off to Vienna. So, although my sklepnik was busy and the bells were ringing for him all over the house, I held on to him and insisted upon him giving me a short lesson in Czechish. But when I found that even his own name when you call him is not the same name as when you speak of him, and that he became in the course of five minutes’ conversation sklepnick, sklepnickee, sklepnicka, sklepniko, etc., I let him go and take other people their breakfast, and got on with mine.

My panskou was so good-looking that I had serious thoughts of writing a song in her honour, entitled ‘The Prettiest Panskou in Prague,’ and getting somebody to put it into Czechish, that I might send it to her anonymously next Valentine’s Day; but I heard that she was engaged to be married to the poshluhu on the third-floor, and so another example was added to my famous collection of ‘Songs without Words.’

Before I went out to see the sights of Prague I gave myself just a few minutes further private instruction in the language of the land, and sat down with a dictionary and a pipe in front of the printed notice in my bedroom. This time I selected for study the following startling passage: ‘Racte pouzy ucty kancelÁri stvrzone vyplÁcenti! Pokrmy a napoje v jidelne oderbrane buatez tamtez zaplaceny.’ I worried at it with my German Czechish dictionary until I felt that if there was any insanity in my family history I should develop the latent Deemingism in my system, and possibly bury the sklepnik, the panskou, and the poshluhu under the same cement; and then I sent for my guide. My guide was a Bohemian who acquired English early in the sixties in the goldfields of California. He has lost a good deal of it since. ‘Honyrabble zir!’ he said, ‘dat mean, your honour. Dat vat you eats and drinks underneath ze stairs pays for itself dere at ze times, honyrabble zir.’ After a few minutes of serious reflection, I solved this further problem: Racte pouzy ucty kancelÁri, etc., meant that all meals taken in the restaurant should be paid for at the time, and not put on the bill.

When you have sufficiently admired Prague itself, and recognised the fact that it is ‘picturesquely situated on the banks of the Moldau’ (vide guide-books), the first thing you do is to explore the venerable Hradshin, or Capitol. High on the Hradshin Hill stands the Archbishop’s Palace, the Schwarzenberg Palace, and the palace of the Emperor, and the famous cathedral dedicated to St. Vitus. On the hottest day of this present May, with thunder threatening and never a breath of air blowing, did I pant through palaces and crawl around cathedrals with the Californian-Bohemian. Many were the wonders that he showed me, and at least a hundred times that day did he call me ‘honyrabble zir.’ At last I became so worn out that it was almost with relief that I saw him suddenly slip up on a stone and turn his ankle. I am afraid he was in great pain; but his ardour and his pace were alike moderated after that, and I was saved from an apoplectic stroke following on over-exertion on a blazing hot day. After the accident, I offered him one arm and hired a native to give another; and between us we led him slowly around the Hradshin, and I allowed him to explain as much as I wanted to know, and then bore him away in triumph to something else. While he was a free agent his lectures were interminable, and he kept me for three-quarters of an hour looking at a brick wall in St. Vitus’s because a Jew boy had been buried behind it some centuries previously.

There are two legends, or perhaps I should say historical facts, which follow you all over Prague—the story of St. John of Nepomuk and the story of Slavata and Martinitz. From the moment you land in Prague to the moment you leave it the names of these three gentlemen are dinned into your ears with damnable iteration. I happened to be in Prague on the eve of the great annual fÊte of St. John of Nepomuk, and so I had an extra dose of him.

Of course you know the story of the patron saint of Bohemia. You remember that Johanko von Nepomuk was a great preacher in Prague in the fourteenth century. He became almoner to King Wenzel or Venzeslaus IV., the great German Emperor, and King of Bohemia, and confessor to the Queen. The Queen soon afterwards began to look depressed, and tears were often in her eyes. King Wenzel was annoyed. ‘Charlotte,’ he said, ‘why are you always in the blues? It gives me the hump. Cheer up, old lady, or tell me what is the matter.’ The Queen only shook her head and sniffed. Then Wenzel swore several oaths of the period, and went off to the Rev. Mr. Johanko von Nepomuk and said to him, ‘Look here, your reverence, the Queen confesses to you, so you know what is the matter with her, and why she is always snivelling and howling!’ (He was a brutal fellow was Wenzel, and very coarse in his conversation.) ‘Now, then, is it because I bully her, or has she got a love affair—eh, old chap? Own up!’ The Rev. Johanko frowned and shook his head.

‘The secrets of the confessional are sacred. Go to!’

The wicked Wenzel didn’t go to, as you will presently see. He went nap. Soon afterwards, at a royal dinner-party, a capon came up, and the King got a slice from the breast that was slightly underdone. Whereupon, in a rage, he seized the capon, hurled it on the floor, and jumped upon it. (I fancy he suffered with his liver, this Wenzel, and was subject to neurotic blizzards.) Then he sent for the cook and had him spitted alive and roasted in front of his kitchen fire. ‘And see that he is better done than this capon,’ was the King’s final instruction to the cookers of the cook.

The Rev. Mr. Nepomuk, when he heard of this, gave the King a piece of his mind, for which impertinence he was put into prison, and, while there, the King sent for him and said, ‘Now, my friend, are you going to tell me what the Queen confessed?’ ‘Certainly not, sire,’ replied Nepomuk, although, after what had happened to the cook, he guessed his refusal would get him into trouble. It did. Every effort of the King having failed to shake the determination of the rev. gentleman, he was one day seized by soldiers, bound hand and foot, and flung over the big bridge into the Moldau.

King Wenzel fancied no one would know what had become of Nepomuk; but a miracle happened. When the rev. gentleman fell into the water the water retired, and the bed of the river was dry for three days. The body was recovered, and to-day it is in a glass coffin enclosed in a solid silver one in the cathedral on the Hradshin. The saint has moreover in the cathedral a solid silver monument, and silver angels holding golden lamps of immense value hover over his shrine. I shall not forget that silver monument for many a long day. I was so entranced with it that I let the Californian-Bohemian tell me stories about Nepomuk that would have caused the Marines to shake their heads, and it wasn’t until he had called me ‘honyrabble zir’ for the fourteenth time that at last I took his arm and led him limping away.

Ever since this occasion St. Nepomuk has been the patron saint of bridges (he was canonized by Benedict XIII.), and in Bohemia and some parts of Austria his fÊte-day is kept with the wildest rejoicings. Oddly enough, though the people of Prague always sing ‘St. Nepomuk, protect me’ when they cross a bridge, the bridge from which he was thrown—the glorious KarlsbrÜcke—- was broken down, and the middle of it carried away, by the great floods of 1890. A wooden bridge does duty while the grand old structure is being rebuilt. As I crossed the portion of the old stone bridge which is still standing I saw a huge gilt altar, erected almost at the point where the arches have been swept away. It was surrounded by hundreds of lamps, and mighty banks of flowers were piled around it. This was the altar to St. Nepomuk, which was being prepared for May 16. On that day thousands of pilgrims come from all parts of Bohemia to visit the bridge, and do honour to the saint. This year they found that the patron saint of bridges had allowed his own bridge to come to grief.

This St. Nepomuk Day in Prague is something you must see to understand. The streets are a dense mass of gay revellers and happy pilgrims from dawn till midnight. All the quaint national costumes of Bohemia light up the beflagged and beflowered thoroughfares. All day long the merry lads and lasses sing Bohemian songs, and dance Bohemian dances in the streets, the squares, and the parks. At night fireworks blaze up from all parts of the town, and a million extra lights make the glorious city on the Moldau a never-to-be-forgotten spectacle.

I lingered in Prague for the fÊte of St. Nepomuk, and I saw a sight which I shall remember all my days without referring either to notebook or diary. Good old St. Nepomuk! If he had not been thrown over the KarlsbrÜcke I should not have seen the Bohemian national fÊte. King Wenzel, I owe you one!

The National Theatre in Prague, where only plays and operas in the Czechish language are performed, is one of the finest in Europe. I saw there a Czechish opera entitled ‘ProdanÁ Nevesta,’ or ‘The Sold Bride.’ At the ‘NÁrodni Divadlo,’ or National Theatre, the operas are staged in a manner which excites the admiration even of our own Sir Augustus, and the chorus works as I have never seen a chorus work before. Everybody enters into the business of the scene, and fills it up, and the illusion is absolutely perfect.

As they thought it worth while to make an exhibition of theatrical programmes at the Vienna Exhibition, I may as well give you a little bit of a Prague programme (no charge), just to show you how it looks. Here is the one for which in a private box I paid ten kreuzers, and which an old lady obligingly stuck on to the velvet with a pin to prevent its falling over.

PRODANÁ NEVESTA.

KomickÁ zpevohra o trech jednÁnÍch. Hudbu sloil
Bedrich Smetana. Slova od K. Sabiny.
Osoby:

Coming home from the Divadlo I lost myself, and had a bad quarter of an hour wandering around small back streets and trying to ask my way in Czechish. The theatres begin at half-past six in Prague, some of them as early as five, so that soon after ten there are very few people in the streets. It was half-past ten when I succeeded in getting out of a labyrinth of byways into what looked like a main thoroughfare, and then there was not a soul to be seen—not even a Prague policeman with ostrich feathers in his hat. I wondered how on earth I should get to my hotel, for I hadn’t the faintest idea where it was, and one street was very like another to me. I wandered up and down for a quarter of an hour, hoping a belated wayfarer would come along, but I only met a couple of cats swearing at each other in Czechish, and they fled at my approach.

What was I to do? I didn’t feel inclined to wander about Prague all night. Suddenly a brilliant idea occurred to me. I saw a red light over a door, and outside a bell, with the German for night bell written below it. A doctor lived there. I hesitated a moment, and then I rang it. Presently a gentleman put his head out of an upper window and addressed me in Czechish. I replied in German that I didn’t understand the language. Then he asked me what I wanted in German. I replied, ‘Advice; I am not well. Please come down and feel my pulse and look at my tongue.’ He closed the window, came down and opened the front-door, and asked me to come in. ‘No, thank you,’ I said; ‘I am in a hurry. Come under the lamp-post.’ He came under the lamp-post, looked at my tongue, felt my pulse, and said that I was only a little bilious. I had better go to the chemist’s and get some antibilious pills. ‘Thank you, doctor,’ I said. ‘What is your fee?’ He told me his fee was three gulden for a night consultation. I paid the money, and then I said to him: ‘And now, doctor, if you will kindly tell me which is my way to the HÔtel Royal, I shall be much obliged to you.’ The doctor gave me minute directions, bowed, put my three gulden in the pocket of his dressing-gown, and went back to bed; and I went back to my hotel and did ditto.

It was rather an expensive method of asking your way, but what are you to do when you are lost in a town where everybody goes to bed at ten, and not a living soul reappears in the streets till the next morning? I don’t know whether the policemen go to bed, but I didn’t see one about. Perhaps they were all having pipes round a quiet corner.

Messrs. Slavata and Martinitz owe their immortality to their having been victims of that excellent Bohemian method of getting rid of an enemy which is called ‘po starotshesku.’ There is a splendid simplicity about the process. It merely consists of taking your enemy by the legs and throwing him out of the window. The higher the window the better for you and the worse for your enemy. Slavata and Martinitz were flung out of the window of a high tower in which the Council Chamber was situated. Although both fell actually on their heads, they figuratively fell on their feet, for a heap of manure received them safely and broke the news that they had arrived at their destination gently to them. They escaped and lived for some years afterwards, but the religious party in whose cause they had made themselves objectionable kept their memory green, and to-day in Prague, after you have honoured St. John of Nepomuk, you are expected to pay homage to the memory of Slavata and Martinitz.

After I had finished the Hradshin, and wandered through the royal palace, I had to lead my guide through the palace of Wallenstein, where he pointed out to me all the mementoes of the mighty general of the Thirty Years’ War in the famous halls. By this time I was so dog-tired that I began to hate Bohemia, and almost to think unkind things about St. John of Nepomuk; and when my guide wanted me to take him over another church, I rose up and politely intimated to him that if he asked me to see anything else that day I would give him a chance of immortality by throwing him into the Moldau at the very spot where Nepomuk perished. I think he saw I meant it, so he allowed me to put him in a carriage and take him home.

I have only hummed one air since I came into Austria, and that is, ‘Oh, them gulden slippers.’ They give you your gulden in a banknote, and a gulden is not quite two shillings. The astonishing rapidity with which those guldens became gulden slippers must be seen to be believed. Cabmen, railway porters, restaurant waiters, and the people generally who expect tips, never have any change, and it is cheaper to give the gulden than to wait while they go to the Bank of Austria to get it changed. If they have change it is of such a character that you are better without it. Eating cheap tinned peas, the colour of the O’Flaherty floral abomination, is a harmless amusement compared with keeping the small coin currency of the Austrian Empire in your pocket with chocolate creams, peppermints, cough lozenges, digestive tablets, and other delicacies of the season.