BOHEMIA AND ITS PEOPLE 



peasant was nothing but a serf a slave. Now he 

 has got his freedom, and he is not quite sure what 

 to do with it. Traces of the old regime still linger. 

 The peasant still kisses the hand of the local lord 

 of the soil, and cringes before his superiors as they 

 pass. In private, however, he drinks in the prin- 

 ciples of socialism and anarchy, which that curse of 

 the present day, the paid agitator, is only too ready 

 to pour into his ears. 



But, at the bottom, the peasant is not a bad fellow. 

 He is quite uneducated, and miserably poor. If he 

 is an agricultural labourer, his wages amount to the 

 magnificent sum of one shilling a day. Probably his 

 wife also works in the fields, and earns thereby six- 

 pence per diem. But he cannot count even on 

 these poor wages all the year round. There is the 

 long hard winter to be got through, when work is 

 not to be had. At this time he runs into debt with 

 the Jew shopkeeper one of which is to be found in 

 every village, however tiny and then part of his 

 wages of the next summer have to go in attempting 

 to free himself from the web that the Israelite spider 

 is, slowly but surely, spinning round him. Little 

 wonder that the daily fare of the Bohemian peasant 

 consists of dry black bread. 



His cottage is nothing more than a hovel, and 

 household and personal cleanliness are things un- 

 known. If he should be somewhat better off, and 



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