HUNGARY: A LAND OF SHEPHERD KINGS 



357 



Perhaps it is this touch of genius 

 which has made of the pleasant city of the 

 Magyars the playground of a continent. 



Budapest is, after all, what Nature 

 and the Magyar have made her. But to 

 comprehend her, to come into intimate 

 touch with the wonder of things Magyar, 

 it is not enough to understand the archi- 

 tect and all for which he stands. The 

 city of the Magyars has her own secret : 

 she may be experienced, but not de- 

 scribed. 



And the Magyar himself, that lovable 

 Bohemian whom culture irks, how may 

 one sound his complex depths ? 



Never was a people more addicted to 

 philosophy than this people — a philoso- 

 phy frankly Teutonic. Never was a peo- 

 ple more prone to appeal to the sedative 

 properties of half-bricks, a philosophy 

 as frankly Celtic. It would be difificult 

 to find a race more fitted to govern, and 

 impossible to name one less able. 



Imagine a people sharing in the superb 

 heritage of the Roman Church permeated 

 to the core with the fatalism of the 

 Orient ; a people whose laws are, in some 

 respects, models for the Anglo-Saxon 

 race, still tainted, as to some Arcadian 

 valleys, with the shadow of the jus 

 primes noctis; a people criminally unable 

 to hit from the shoulder, overrun with 

 lawyers, who minister to its sheer Hi- 

 bernian love of quarreling. 



The true Magyar would scorn to bear 

 false witness against his neighbor ; he 

 honors his father and mother ; he does 

 not steal ; he cannot curse ; nor does he 

 work on the seventh day, nor indeed on 

 any other. The other commandments 

 take their chance. 



THE QUESTION OE TRIBUTE 



These things may not be quite con- 

 vincing. But when we approach the 

 question of tribute, the rendering unto 

 Caesar of things which are not Csesar's, 

 the pure Oriental emerges from his 

 purely accidental Western environment 

 and is again in the tents of Shem. 



If service be rendered, you pay on 

 sound commercial principles ; if you ren- 

 der the service, you pay on unsound Ara- 

 bian principles less easy to defend. If 

 you cross a bridge or enter a tunnel, if 



you bet, if you pay rent, make a contract, 

 send in an application, save money, play 

 cards, chess, dominoes, send out a bill, 

 pay a bill, get a license, get a certificate, 

 get married, get buried, get hanged, there 

 is ever this little matter of dustoorie. If 

 you belong to any defined religious per- 

 suasion, you pay; it is a lux vis. If not, 

 you are held in truculent contempt by the 

 authorities for evading your just dues, 

 and in wondering envy by the faithful. 

 For every conceivable thing, in all con- 

 ceivable and some inconceivable circum- 

 stances, you pay. Call it excise, customs, 

 rates, octroi, tips, dues, taxes, commis- 

 sion, extortion, bribes — call it what you 

 will — you will pay it. 



Take a typical, concrete, every-day in- 

 stance. Go into a cafe and order a glass 

 of milk, the nominal value of which may 

 be 15 kreuzers. Perhaps the waiter will 

 bring it, perhaps he will forget. 



For the sake of the argument he 

 brings it. The waiter, also the boy who 

 loads your table with yesterday's papers, 

 also the man who swoops upon your hat, 

 also the Gipsy who pours out his soul in 

 alleged music for his own satisfaction — 

 and he is easily satisfied — also the dis- 

 guised Marquis who happens to wander 

 in your direction, all must be appeased. 

 Under 60 kreuzers you cannot well es- 

 cape. 



I speak, of course, of the ordinary 

 timid citizen who approaches no nearer 

 heroism than a prosaic dispute as to cab 

 hire, not of the brave man, born once in 

 a century, who pays his 15 kreuzers and 

 strolls out without feeling any desperate 

 inclination to run for it. I never met 

 this demigod, of course. 



This, then, is the happy-go-lucky Mag- 

 yar of the City Beautiful, the mercurial 

 citizen who lives by chance, who will 

 stake his all and much of yours on the 

 turn of a card or the speed of a horse, 

 to whom life is a masquerade of the gods 

 and suicide no crime, whose business is 

 pleasure, who will one day infallibly be 

 rich by the turn of a lottery wheel. This 

 is the strange anomaly who would fight 

 for a woman in this world or for heaven 

 in the next, but who would work for nei- 

 ther in any world or any circumstances 

 whatever. 



