PARTITIONED POLAND 



105 



and to play cards and amuse him and his 

 guests. This last duty is best performed 

 by our Matenko, the fool or court jester, 

 as the other courtiers call him. Of all 

 the courtiers he is the most privileged, 

 being allowed to speak whenever he 

 chooses and to tell the truth frankly. 



"The honorary courtiers receive no 

 pay, almost all of them being the sons 

 and daughters of rather wealthy parents, 

 who send them to our castle for training 

 in courtly etiquette. The men receive, 

 nevertheless, provisions for two horses, 

 and two florins (about 40 cents) weekly 

 for their valets. These servants are 

 dressed, some as Cossacks, some as Hun- 

 garians, and stand behind their masters' 

 chairs at meals. There is no special table 

 for them ; but they must be satisfied with 

 what their masters leave upon their 

 plates, and you should see how they fol- 

 low with a covetous eye each morsel on 

 the way from the plate to the master's 

 mouth. 



"I do not care to look at them, partly 

 from fear of laughing and partly out of 

 pity. To tell the truth, those who sit at 

 our table have more honor than profit ; 

 for they do not always have the same 

 kind of food that we have, although it 

 comes from the same dish. For instance, 

 when the meats are brought in, there will 

 be on the dish game or domestic fowl on 

 the top and plain roast beef or roast pork 

 underneath. 



"The salaried courtiers are much more 

 numerous. They do not come to our 

 table, except the chaplain, the physician, 

 and the secretary. As for other people 

 belonging to our retinue, it would be 

 difficult to enumerate them ; I am sure I 

 do not know how many there are of mu- 

 sicians, cooks, link-boys, Cossacks, host- 

 lers, valets, chamberlains, and boy and 

 girl servants. I know only there are five 

 different dinner tables, and two stewards 

 are busy, from morning till night giving 

 out provisions for the meals." 



POLISH WOMEN 



Polish women are among the most 

 beautiful in the world. The perfect shape 

 of their hands and feet is commented 

 upon by every visitor to the home of the 

 Polish aristocracy. When they visit the 

 shoe stores in Vienna, it is averred that 



the shopkeeper exclaims : "We know 

 those are Polish feet," and proceeds to 

 go to cases that are not drawn upon ex- 

 cept when Polish women come into his 

 store. 



With their beauty they combine unusual 

 linguistic abilities and almost unprece- 

 dented devotion to the lost cause of their 

 fair Poland. It has frequently been as- 

 serted by those who know the Poles from 

 intimate social relations with them, that 

 but for the women the national spirit of 

 the Pole would long since have suc- 

 cumbed to the wound-healing processes 

 of time. As it is, there is a proverb that 

 while there is a single Polish woman left 

 the cause of Poland is not lost. "Four 

 ladies do not meet on a charity committee 

 without promoting the national cause 

 under its cover," is the way one writer 

 shows their devotion to the cause of 

 Poland. 



some; noted poees 



Poland has contributed a long list of 

 great and near great to civilization. It 

 was Copernicus, a Pole, who first taught 

 that the sun is the center of the solar sys- 

 tem and laid the foundations of modern 

 astronomy. It was John Sobieski who 

 saved Europe from the Turks as Charles 

 Martel hammered it out of the grasp of 

 the Saracens. Kosciuszko and Pulaski 

 served the cause of freedom both in Eu- 

 rope and America. The "Quo Vadis" of 

 Sienkiewicz will never be forgotten as 

 long as literature and history are appre- 

 ciated by man. The music of Paderew- 

 ski entitles him to a place among the im- 

 mortals, and the histrionic art of Mod- 

 jeska gave her a foremost place in the 

 history of the stage. The compositions 

 of Chopin, a Pole by birth, though a 

 Frenchman by education, will float down 

 through the corridors of time along with 

 those of Wagner, Beethoven, Handel, 

 Verdi, and the other masters. 



POEES IN AMERICA 



From the days of Kosciuszko down to 

 the present, Poles have been no mean 

 contributors to American civilization. 

 Leopold Julian P)oeck is credited with 

 having led the movement for the estab- 

 lishment of the first polytechnic institution 

 in the United States. Four million Poles 



