BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 
91 
and a new opera, nor the pages of any recent literary success, 
nor yet a woodland scene of exquisite grandeur, but they would 
be the impressions of the daily life of a people in remote valleys 
of Austria. This peasantry leads a life of toil incessant, un¬ 
fruitful, and hopeless, with no other outlook beyond the life 
their fathers led before them, with no other promise than the 
promise held out by the wide-stretching arms of Rome to her 
faithful children, in lieu of their allegiance. Not an unusual 
picture outside of Austria. 
A people bound by an iron band of authority, forged by 
church and state, from whose clasp there is no escape. A 
happy people withal, the discontented possibly the exception; 
but happy only through an enforced ignorance of the truth; 
the awful reality of their own helplessness and hopelessness. 
Any day the disillusion may come. How unprepared are 
these people for disclosures! Can their condition be imagined 
at the awakening? 
A people whose lands are taxed and mortgaged, only the 
strenuous exertion of united family labor, and that is barely 
enough, to meet their obligations. The money from this labor 
goes for the sustainment and support of the nobility, and the 
leisure classes. What are their lives? Very little beyond a 
round of useless charities, pleasures, and idleness in the cities. 
There is no need to enumerate in detail. Their lives are well 
enough known to all. They do not want for bread. Whilst 
the blood of the worn, scantily fed, meanly housed, poorly 
clothed workers is shed, literally drop by drop, for beings call¬ 
ing themselves human but — in fact incarnations of aimless¬ 
ness. This contrast, so unjust, so inhuman, opposed to the 
teachings of the Nazarene whom all in that land profess to 
revere — cannot be portrayed by words. The condition must 
be seen to be felt. 
In conversing with men and women belonging to the titled 
classes in Austria, I gathered that the desire on the part of 
the majority of these persons was only an echo of a common 
feeling to discourage the education of the poorer classes be¬ 
yond a very limited standard. Others went so far as to pro¬ 
nounce all education for these classes baneful, as leading to 
