There is a region in northeastern Hungary where in the course of a day's ride one may pass through, one after another, villages inhabited by as many as five different races--Ruthenians, Jews, Roumanians, Hungarians, and Germans. A racial map of the Dual Empire shows districts in which one race predominates, but these same districts will very likely be dotted with villages in which the fragments of other races still survive, some of them, like the Turks, so few in number that they are not separately counted as part of the population. Under these circumstances travel in this part of the world is made interesting but not easy.
Fortunately, I had letters of introduction to Dr. Albert W. Clarke, head of the Austrian branch of the American Board of Missions at Prague, and he introduced me to some of his native assistants who spoke English, and kindly assisted me in finding what I most desired to see of the city and the people. Through him I had an opportunity to get inside of some of the tenements in which European people live, and to see some of the working people in their homes. I did not have an opportunity to explore the parts of the city in which the very poor people live; in fact, I was told that there was nothing in Prague that corresponded to the slums of our English and American cities. There is much poverty, but it is poverty of a self-respecting sort--not of those who have been defeated and gone under, but of those who have never got up.
I found the average Bohemian workman living in two rooms and working for wages considerably less than the same kind of labour would have brought in England, and very much less than the same kind of labour would have brought in America. There is, however, very little use in comparing the wages that men earn unless you are able to compare all the surrounding conditions.
During my stay in Prague I had an opportunity to see something close at hand of the life of the farming population. Under the guidance of one of Doctor Clarke's assistants I drove out one day to a little village where there were a number of people who had come under the influence of the American Mission in Prague, and where I was assured I should find a welcome.
It was not, perhaps, the best place to get an idea of what is most characteristic in Bohemian country life. I had hoped to see something of the local customs of the country people, but, though it was a holiday when I made my visit, I did not see a single peasant costume.