Our Little Slavic Cousins: Russian, Polish, Czech-Slovak

OUR LITTLE CZECHO-SLOVAK COUSIN who had just come up. He was a tall, thin, muscular man, whose hair hung down his back in two tiny braids. He was known for his liberal and somewhat “heretical” opinions. “I am going there after the holidays. Do you want to send some message?”

The teacher explained to him how things stood. “If we don’t educate our children,” he pleaded, “the Magyars will take greater and greater advantage of our ignorance.”

Jozef’s godfather stood a few moments in thought. Then he nodded good-by and left. The teacher was not put out.

He was glad that he was going to think it over.

The next morning the godfather was over at Jozef’s house bright and early.

“I’ve decided,” he said, “that the teacher is right. In Bohemia, Jozef will learn more about his own country than we can ever teach him here and he’ll learn to fight. I’ll take him with me and somehow we’ll find means to pay for his schooling there.”

So, one day, Jozef found himself whirled away on a train over the fertile farm lands of Moravia, in parts of which there are many Slovak villages, through Nivnitz, where the great Moravian educator, John Amos Comenius was born, 242