Our Little Czecho-Slovak Cousin

THERE was mourning in the little village high up in the Tatras, as the Carpathian Mountains are called by the Slovaks. Nine men and women lay dead and four lay wounded behind ca...

JOZEF'S home was one of the high-roofed houses whose gable ends faced the broad, whitish main street. It was made of unburnt bricks, plastered outside, with hand-made shingles o...

The son knew not what to do, for of all the maidens in his father's court there was none that had especial charm for him. He was thinking this over in the castle garden when an...

IT was getting dusky in the woods when the little party started reluctantly for home. The birds were already chattering their good nights before preparing for sleep and a belate...

"WE'RE off! Good-by!" cheerily called out four sturdy, red-cheeked girls, early one morning. They were walking in pairs, with bundles in their hands and their shoes slung over t...

"R-R-R-RUB-RUB-RUB!" went the little drum beaten by the bailiff as he stalked through the village. Every one hurried to door or window to learn what the news might be. It would...

IT was Saturday and Ruzena had just returned to the village from some distance outside of it. She brought back some of the red sand that was prized highly for sprinkling over th...

OTHER things occurred so unexpectedly and rapidly that boylike, Jozef forgot all about his store of hidden food. Late in the Fall, most of the children under twelve were back in...

"I'd let him go on if we had schools of our own, but I won't have him go to a Magyar school to forget his language and learn to despise his own kin like Shlachta's boy," his fat...

It was not long before Jozef felt quite at home. The boys at first teased him about his dialect, but it was such good-natured teasing that he did not mind it. Once when the teac...

THE world rang with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke, Francis Ferdinand, and his wife, at Sarajevo, in a province of Austria-Hungary, but quite outside the Czech and S...

I WAS drafted in July, 1915, and sent with others to a Hungarian training camp. We were not there long before we heard that we were to go to the front. On the day of departure,...

I WAS so happy now. Every morning I awakened with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart. For were we not going to free our dear, our native land, of the usurper? We again sa...

IT was October, and Jozef's godfather had gone again to Bohemia, this time as a delegate representing the Slovak National Council. The Czecho-Slovak National Alliance and its ar...