V First Journey to Idvor in Eleven Years
It was a beautiful June afternoon when from the gay deck of the State of Florida I saw the low coast-line of Long Island disappear in the distance. With it disappeared the land the first glimpse of which I had caught so eagerly on that sunny March morning nine years before, when the immigrant ship Westphalia carried me into New York harbor. As I had approached this coast my busy imagination had suggested that it was the edge of the cover of a great and mysterious book which I had to read and decipher. I had read it for nine long years, and my belief that I had deciphered it made me confident that I was quite rich in learning. Besides, there were my Bachelor of Arts diploma and my naturalization papers; and, of course, I thought, they were the best evidence in the world that I was returning to see my mother again rich in learning and in academic honors, as I had promised her nine years before in that letter from Hamburg.
The sky was clear, the sea was smooth, and its sharp and even horizon line toward which the ship was heading promised a peaceful temper of the powers which controlled the motions of the air above and of the waters below our ship. The comforts of the ship and the fair prospects of a fine voyage were recorded in the smiling faces of my fellow passengers. A group of lively schoolgirls from Washington, making their first trip to Europe under the guidance of an old professor with long gray hair and shaggy beard, looked like so many nymphs playing around a drowsy Neptune. They formed the central group of the happy passengers. There were a number of college boys on board. Some of them had friends among the Washington nymphs; by clever manœuvring it was arranged that the college boys, including myself, should sit at the same table with the playful nymphs. The gray-locked professor, whom I called Father Neptune (and the title stuck to him), was somewhat reluctant at first, but finally he gave his consent to this “wonderful” proposition, as the girls called it, and he sat at the head of the table, presiding with a dignity which fully demonstrated that he deserved the title “Father Neptune.” The jolly captain assured us that his good old ship never carried a more exuberant company of youngsters across the Atlantic. But this was not the fierce Atlantic which I had seen nine years before. It was an Atlantic which apparently studied to please and to amuse. All kinds of pleasant things happened during the voyage, as if arranged purposely for our amusement. Many schools of porpoises approached the merry ship, and I suggested that they visited us in order to pay their respects to Father Neptune and his beautiful nymphs. This suggestion was accepted with vociferous acclamation, and it was agreed that free play be granted to our imaginations. Let your fancy take any course at your own risk, was our motto. When the visiting porpoises hustled off like a squadron of reconnoitring horsemen leaping gaily over the smooth waves, as if in a merry steeplechase, it was suggested by one of the girls with a lively imagination that they were anxious to report to the chief of staff of a great host which, hidden in the depths of the quiescent Atlantic, controlled the ocean waves. She, the oracle, as we called her, prophesied that when these heralds had delivered the report that Father Neptune and his fair nymphs were passing in triumphal procession through their watery realm, then all things in the heavens above and in the sea below would bow to the will of Neptune and his playful crew.
Two spouting whales appeared one day in the distance, and our busy imaginations suggested that they were two men-o’-war, sent by the friendly submarine host to pay their homage to Neptune and his nymphs, and to serve as escort to our speedy ship. Nothing happened which did not receive a fanciful interpretation by our playful imaginations. The wonderful phosphorescence of the waves, which were ploughed up in the smooth sea by the gliding ship, supported the illusion that our voyage was a triumphal procession along an avenue illuminated by the mysterious phosphorescent glow. We were headed for Scotland, by a route which passed to the north of Ireland, and as our course approached the northern latitudes the luminous twilights of the North Atlantic made us almost forget that there ever was such a thing as a dark night. Good old Neptune had quite a job to round up his nymphs in the late hours of the evening and make them turn in and exchange the joys of the busy days for the blessings of the restful nights. His job was hopeless when the northern midnights displayed the awe-inspiring streamers of the northern lights, and that happened quite frequently. Those wonderful sights in themselves would have made it worth while crossing the Atlantic. On such evenings the exuberance of the college boys and of the schoolgirls from Washington was wide awake until after midnight, watching the luminous and continuously changing streamers of the polar regions, telling stories, and singing college songs. These evenings reminded me much of the neighborhood gatherings in Idvor. One of them was devoted to original stories; each member of the gay party had to spin out an original tale. My story was called “Franciscus of Freiburg,” and it referred to Bilharz, the Greek guslar of Cortlandt Street. The disappointments of his youth, the calm resignation with which in his more mature years he passed his hermit days on a top loft in Cortlandt Street, and his search for consolation in the poetry of Rome and Greece made quite an impression; and to my great surprise there was not a single giggle on the part of the irrepressible nymphs. This was the first story that I ever composed, and it made a hit, but its success was completely ruined when, prompted by modesty, I suggested that any tale describing disappointments in love is sure to be taken very seriously and sympathetically by young girls. A violent protest was filed by the girls, and I pleaded guilty of the offense of disturbing public peace. A mock trial, with Father Neptune as the presiding judge, condemned me and imposed the fine that I tell at once, and without preparation, another original tale. I described the first speech of my life on St. Sava’s day, some thirteen years earlier, and its unexpected effect upon my mischievous chums in Idvor, comparing it with the unexpected effect of my Franciscus story. I regretted it, because the fairies from Washington had an endless chain of questions about Idvor and my prospective visit to it. Never before had I had a better opportunity to observe the beautiful relationship between American boys and girls. Its foundation I recognized to be the idea of the big brother looking after the safety, comfort, and happiness of his sister, the same idea which is glorified in the Serbian national ballads.
One pleasant incident followed another in quick succession during our triumphant procession over the northern Atlantic, and all the powers which control the temper of the ocean were most kind and generous to us, just as our fair oracle had prophesied it. When the cliffs of Scotland hove in sight, reminding us that our voyage was approaching its end, there was no thrill of joy such as there was when the immigrant ship, which first took me into New York harbor, approached the Long Island coast. Not even the countless sea-gulls which gracefully circled around the black cliffs, and with their shrill notes welcomed us to the hospitable shores of Scotland, were able to dispel the gloom which the sight of land produced among the members of Neptune’s table. Nobody in our congenial company seemed to be anxious to say good-by to the good old ship and to the golden atmosphere of the sweet-tempered Atlantic. Most of them had never crossed the Atlantic before, and since the voyage was practically over I thought that there was no harm in describing to them some of the terrors of the Atlantic, which I had experienced when I crossed it nine years before. The pictures of those experiences were like the pictures from another world, and not from the same Atlantic which thrilled us with its sunshine, twilight, phosphorescent glows, and glorious streamers of the northern lights. The comparison between my wretched fellow passengers on the storm-tossed immigrant ship and the radiant company on the ship which brought us to Scotland afforded me a splendid opportunity to thank Father Neptune for permitting me to join his beautiful court. His favor, I said, was almost as great as the favor of the immigrant officials at Castle Garden, who had allowed me to land with only five cents in my pocket. The professor complimented me upon my word pictures which showed the glaring contrasts between the two voyages, and then he referred to two pictures which, he said, he had in his mind. They also showed, he said, in glaring contrasts, the difference between a certain youngster on the immigrant ship to which I referred, and a Columbia College graduate, who had contributed his share to the comfort and happiness of Neptune’s court. When he suggested that he would give much to be with me when I met my mother, and that he wondered whether she would recognize me, my young friends suggested, quite seriously, that they would all go to Idvor if I joined them in their continental tour. I replied that their tour was along a meandering line through the great places of Europe, whereas mine was a straight line from Greenock to little Idvor, so little that it cannot be found on any map.
There was just one thing which delayed my straight-line journey to Idvor. A visit to Cambridge was necessary in order to arrange for my work at this university during the coming academic year, and I lost no time in reaching it. The sight of the Firth of Clyde, with its wonderfully green slopes, of Greenock, of Glasgow, and even of London made feeble impressions. My mind was centred upon one thought only: the speedy return to Idvor. This also explains why my first sight of Cambridge impressed me much less than my first sight of Princeton when, eight years before, I had enjoyed my loaf of bread under an elm-tree in front of Nassau Hall. F. Marion Crawford, the novelist, had given me a letter of introduction to Oscar Browning, a fellow of King’s College; and George Rives, the late chairman of the Board of Trustees of Columbia University, had given me a letter to W. D. Niven, a fellow of Trinity College. Rives, after graduating at Columbia College, won a prize scholarship in classics at Trinity College, and gained there many scholastic honors.
The man at the ancient gate of King’s College informed me that Mr. Oscar Browning was away on his summer vacation. At Trinity College I had better luck, and the man at the still more ancient gate of Trinity College took me to Mr. Niven, who reminded me much of Professor Merriam, the great Greek scholar of Columbia College; the same kindly expression of a most intelligent face, and the same gentle light from two thoughtful eyes. As I looked into his eyes I felt that I was catching a glimpse of a world full of those beautiful things which make life worth living. I informed Niven that I wished to come to Cambridge and study under Professor James Clerk Maxwell, the creator of the new electrical theory. Niven looked puzzled and asked me who had told me of this new theory, and when I mentioned Rutherfurd, he asked me what Rutherfurd had told me about it. “That it will probably give a satisfactory answer to the question: ‘What is Light?’” I answered, and watched for his reaction. “Did not Mr. Rutherfurd tell you that Clerk Maxwell died four years ago?” asked Niven, and when I said no, he asked me whether I had not seen it in the preface to the second edition of Maxwell’s great book which Niven himself had edited. This question embarrassed me, and I confessed frankly that Rutherfurd’s son, my chum Winthrop, had presented me with this book on the day of the sailing of my ship; that it was packed away in my bags; and that I did not have any time to examine it during the voyage, because I was too busy helping to entertain twelve beautiful schoolgirls from Washington, who were making their first trip to Europe. Niven laughed heartily and admitted, jokingly, that twelve beautiful girls from Washington were certainly more attractive than any theory, not excepting even Maxwell’s great electrical theory. He suggested then that I could study at Cambridge under Lord Rayleigh, who had succeeded Maxwell as professor of physics. I declined the suggestion on the ground that I had never heard of Lord Rayleigh before. Niven laughed again, even more heartily than before, and assured me that Lord Rayleigh was a great physicist in spite of the fact that his great fame had never reached my ears. An English lord a great physicist! The idea struck me as strange, but Niven looked so friendly and so sincere that I could not help believing that he really meant what he said. He invited me to lunch, and before we parted I assured him that I would come back to Cambridge in the following October and place myself under his guidance.
This conference with Niven sobered me up very considerably; it convinced me that my great aspiration and my small preparation in physics were far from being of the same order of magnitude. I confessed to Niven that my success in winning prizes in science at Columbia College had led to my belief that I knew more physics than I really did. “Confession is a splendid thing for the soul,” said Niven, and added: “But do not permit that anything I have said dampen your courage. A physicist needs courage, and few mortals were braver than Maxwell. The world knows only a little of his great electrical theory, but it knows even less of his great moral courage.” He gave me a copy of Campbell’s life of Maxwell; I read it from cover to cover before I left London, and it contributed much to the learning which I had promised to bring to Idvor. It certainly convinced me that Maxwell had a vastly better knowledge of physics when he graduated at Cambridge than I had picked up at Columbia. That gave me much healthy food for serious thought.
A straight line from London to Idvor passes through Switzerland, and I proposed to follow that line in my journey as closely as practicable. My ticket took me from London to Lucerne directly; the journey from Lucerne to Idvor I left undetermined until I reached Lucerne. I had no time nor inclination to explore the wonders of London, Paris, or of any other great place in Europe before I had seen Idvor again. Mother, Idvor, and Maxwell’s new electrical theory had brought me to Europe, and I wished to see them as soon as possible, and in the order named; everything else could wait. Besides, I sincerely believed that these places had little to offer to a fellow like me, who knew the great things of New York. I was much disposed to look down upon things in Europe, a mental attitude which is not uncommon among American immigrants when they go back to pay a temporary visit to Europe. I had it quite strongly, but sobering experiences like the conference with Niven in Cambridge helped me to apply suitable correction factors to this mental attitude. The following brief description of one of these experiences bears upon this point.
The London-Lucerne train crossed the Franco-Swiss frontier very early in the morning, somewhere near Neuchâtel. The delay necessary for the rearrangement of the train gave the passengers ample time to enjoy their breakfast in the garden of the station restaurant. A look to the east caught a sight which made me almost forget my breakfast. The distant snow-covered Alps, bathed in the early sunshine and projected against the background of the luminous blue sky of a July morning, furnished a picture never to be forgotten. I had never seen the Alps before, and this first view of them was of overpowering beauty. An Englishman, a fellow traveller, sitting opposite me at the breakfast-table, noticed my mental exaltation, and asked: “You have never seen the Alps before, have you?” “No,” said I. “Oh, what a lucky lad you are!” said the Englishman, adding that he would give much to be in my place. He confessed that he had to climb the peaks of the Alps in order to get those thrills which in former days, when he was of my age, he got by looking at them from the valleys below. At his suggestion we continued our journey to Lucerne in the same compartment, and the stories of his climbing exploits stirred up mightily my imagination, which was already throbbing under the inspiration of the Alpine view which had greeted me that morning. When I informed him that I was in a hurry to reach my native village of Idvor, otherwise I might try some climbing myself, he assured me that a ten days’ delay in Lucerne would suffice to prepare me for climbing one of the lesser peaks, and he mentioned Titlis, not far from Lucerne. He prescribed the training which would provide me with sufficiently steady Alpine legs. From the peak of the Titlis, he said, I could see old Switzerland where the famous legend was born which relates how Tell drove the fear of God into the hearts of the Austrians. I always loved that legend, perhaps because I did not love the Austrian tyrants. When the train had reached Lucerne I saw the wonderful Alpine panorama spread out like an amphitheatre of snow-covered Alpine peaks around its deep-blue lake, and I knew that in spite of my great haste to reach Idvor I would not leave this fairy-land before I had reached the snow-covered peak of Titlis.
I immediately hired a rowboat for a week, and, clad in a rowing shirt with blue and white Columbia stripes and thin tennis trousers, I spent that afternoon exploring the beauty spots of the meandering shore of the historic lake. The joy of rowing and the busy rays of the July sun made me yield to the invitation of the clear waters of the lake to plunge in and hug the waves, which once upon a time carried Tell to safety after he had sent his arrow through the heart of the Austrian tyrant, Gessler. As if imitating the example of Tell, I jumped in just as I was, trusting that subsequent rowing and the sun would dry my scanty attire, and they did. A glorious feeling of freedom from all earthly restraints came over me as, floating on my back, I beheld the blue sky above and the snow-covered peaks around me. It was the same sky and the same luminous peaks, I thought, which five hundred years before saw William Tell chase away the Austrian tyrants from the historic cantons surrounding the lake; from Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden. I felt that I was floating in the very cradle where real freedom first saw the light of day. No other spot on earth was more worthy of that immortal fame. My admiration for it never faded after that memorable July afternoon. Europe rose in my estimation; I was much less inclined to look down upon things European.
The next day I was up very early, feeling “as a strong man ready to run a race,” the same feeling which I had experienced at Castle Garden when, nine years before, I woke up early in the morning and hurried off to catch my first glimpse of the great American metropolis. I was just as anxious to hurry off and catch from some mountain-top my first glimpse of Switzerland. Mindful of the suggestions of my English acquaintance on the train, I started with the easiest climb, the Rigi Culm. It is a very easy effort, but I made it difficult by rowing first some ten miles to Weggis, going up to the Rigi and walking down, and then rowing back to Lucerne again on the same day, in the waning hours of the afternoon. An unexpected squall upset my boat, and I had quite a struggle to get back to Lucerne, very late in the evening. The hotel proprietor noticed my mussed-up appearance, but said nothing, seeing that I was not in a communicative mood.
The same strenuous method of preparatory training for the Titlis climb took me up to Mount Pilatus on the next day. But I was not allowed to return on the same day on account of a fierce thunder-storm raging in the valley below, which I watched from the top of the Pilatus. The innkeeper congratulated me upon my rare luck, not only because I had a chance to see the beautiful sight of a thunder-storm as viewed from a point above the thundering clouds, but principally because this thunder-storm prevented me from running the serious risk of descending and rowing back to Lucerne on the same day. Commenting upon the overconfidence of youth, the innkeeper said that every person has a guardian angel, but people intoxicated by wine or by exuberance of youth have two, one on each side. That was his explanation for the alleged fact, he said, that young people and intoxicated people seldom meet with serious accidents in mountain climbing. Some Americans, he thought, should have several guardian angels. This sarcasm was aimed at me, and it did not miss its mark.
Nevertheless, when on my fifth day in Lucerne I started out very early for the Titlis, I adopted the same strenuous method: rowing to Stansstadt, walking to Engelberg, and climbing to the hospice where I arrived at 11 P. M. I reached at sunrise of the following morning the top of Titlis, and saw the glories of Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden as my English friend had promised. But I reached it much exhausted, and if it had not been for the skilled assistance of my trusty Swiss guide, the last four lines of Longfellow’s “Excelsior” would have described my Titlis climb quite accurately. I quote the lines:
“There in the twilight cold and gray,
Lifeless, but beautiful, he lay,
And from the sky, serene and far,
A voice fell, like a falling star,
Excelsior!”
Returning from Titlis, I ran into my English friend, and he remarked that I looked a little overtrained. We dined together, and when I told him the story of my six days’ Alpine experience, he begged me to hustle off to Idvor and see my mother first, and then return if I cared to pursue my own methods of exploring the beauties of Switzerland. “If you continue pursuing these methods now, I am afraid that your mother will never see you again, because there are not enough guardian angels in all the heavens to prevent you from breaking your neck.” I agreed, but assured him that my overstrenuous method of climbing Titlis was worth the risk; it had humbled my vanity and false pride, and made me more respectful to some of the slow ways of old Europe. It convinced me that even after serving my apprenticeship as greenhorn in the United States, I could still be a most verdant greenhorn in Europe. The railroad journey from Lucerne to Vienna afforded me much leisure time for philosophic reflections upon this matter. Thanks to Niven in Cambridge and to my English friend in Lucerne, I reached Vienna with a mental attitude considerably different from and certainly much less exalted than that which I had taken along when I sailed from New York four weeks before.
The railroad-station at Vienna where I took the train for Budapest looked quite familiar, although I had seen it but once before. I did not discover the great and mighty station-master who at my first appearance there, eleven years before, nearly sent me back to the prisons of the military frontier. The conductor, however, who called me “Gnaediger Herr” (gracious sir), when near Gaenserndorf he asked me for my first-class ticket, was the same man who, eleven years before, had called me a Serbian swineherd. I recognized him easily, although he looked very humble and had lost the fierceness which he had displayed when he roughly pulled me off my seat on that memorable first railroad journey from Budapest to Vienna. He failed to recall to memory the Serbian boy with yellow sheepskin coat and cap and the gaily colored bag. I gave him a generous tip as a reward for driving me into the arms of my good American friends who had seen me safely landed in Prague, and the memory of whose kind act had suggested my running off to the land of Lincoln.
“America is the land of rapid changes,” he said, when I told him that I was that boy, and he added: “You must have changed much, looking as you do like a real American; but we here and our dear old Austria are like all old people; we do not change except to grow older and more decrepit.” He expressed exactly what I felt as I looked to the right and to the left of the train which was taking me to Budapest. Everything seemed to move slowly, with the deliberate step of feeble old age. Budapest looked small, and the suspension bridge, which had nearly taken my breath away eleven years before, when I first saw it, looked puny in comparison with the Brooklyn suspension bridge.
I spent no time in looking around to explore the virtues of the Magyar metropolis, but hustled, and presently I was on the boat which eleven years before had brought me to Budapest. I could hardly believe that it was the same boat. It must have shrunk incredibly, I thought, or else my life in America had changed the vision of my eyes. Everything I saw looked small and shrivelled up, and if I had not seen the snow-covered giants of Switzerland as viewed from the top of Titlis, Europe itself might have appeared to me as small and shrivelled up.
When supper was served I noticed that everybody had atrocious table manners, even people of high official rank, several of whom I discovered among my fellow passengers. Eleven years before everybody on the boat had looked so high and mighty that I was almost afraid to look at them, but this time I was much tempted to imagine that I was considerably above most of my fellow passengers. I resisted the temptation. It was a good thing that my climbing of the Titlis had nearly floored me; it suppressed much of that haughtiness which naturalized American immigrants bring with them when they visit Europe.
The next morning I noticed a group of Serb students who were returning home from the universities of Vienna and Budapest. They were from my native Voyvodina, and not from Serbia, as I found out later. Their appearance did not impress me very agreeably, but nevertheless I quivered with delight when I heard their Serb language. They spoke freely, although they must have noticed that they attracted my attention. One of them remarked that I could pass for a Serb, if it were not for my manner, my dress, and my very ruddy complexion. The voyage across the Atlantic and a week’s tramping in Switzerland were responsible for my exaggerated ruddiness. A second one thought that young Serb peasants in Banat are just as ruddy, particularly during the harvest season, but he admitted that my appearance did not suggest that my occupation was that of a peasant. Another one suggested that I was probably a rich South American with very much red Indian blood in my veins. I laughed and, introducing myself, informed him, speaking Serb with some difficulty, that I was neither a South American nor an Indian, but just a Serb student who was a citizen of the United States. A Serb from the United States was a very rare bird in those days and, needless to say, I was invited most cordially to join the group, which I did. Not one of them reminded me of the alert, well-groomed, athletic, and playful American college boys. They all had long hair brushed back in a careless fashion, affecting the appearance of dreamy poets or disciples of radical doctrines. Most of them had slouch hats with wide brims, indicating radical tendencies. Their faces looked pale and suggested excessive indoor confinement in Vienna and Budapest cafés, playing chess or cards, or discussing radical doctrines. Most of them would have been hazed if they had matriculated in any American college without modifying much their appearance and manner. They certainly took themselves very seriously. They knew, I thought, many things which they had read in books, principally in books dealing with radical social-science theories. Tolstoy’s name was mentioned quite often, and the latest apostles of socialistic doctrines also had their share of adulation. They must have observed that conversation about these things bored me, and they asked me, with some display of sarcasm, I thought, whether American college students took any interest in modern advanced thought. “They do,” said I, considerably irritated, “and if it were not for Maxwell’s new electrical theory and for other advanced theories in modern physics I should not have come to your moribund old Europe.” “Advanced thought in social and not in physical sciences,” they said, explaining their original question, and I answered that the most popular American doctrine in social science still rested upon foundations laid a hundred years before that time, in a document called the Declaration of Independence. They knew very little about it, and I knew even less about their radical social-science theories, and we changed the subject of our conversation.
Late in the afternoon the boat approached Karlovci and the hills of Frushka Gora. I could not help reminiscing, and entertained my Serb acquaintances with a description of my experiences with the theological students eleven years before, including the disappearance of my roast goose. My Serbian vocabulary was quite shaky, but nevertheless I made quite a hit, and they begged me to go on with my reminiscences. Whenever I was at a loss for a word, they helped me out. Toward sunset Belgrade hove in sight, and its majestic appearance thrilled me and made my Serb vocabulary run as smoothly as ever. I saluted Belgrade as the acropolis of all the Serbs, and expressed the hope that it might soon become the metropolis of all the southern Slavs. “This is the kind of advanced thought in social and political science that American students are interested in,” I said, reminding them of their former question, and I added a few sarcastic remarks about advanced thoughts in social and political science which are not born in the heart of a nation but imported from the dens of French, German, and Russian theorists. They quickly caught what I called the American point of view, but they did not oppose it, for fear, I thought, of offending me. They saw the American chip on my shoulder, and did not care to knock it off.
I had not seen Belgrade since I was a little boy, and as the boat approached it I saw its high fort rising like a Gibraltar above the waters of the Danube and looking anxiously across the endless plains of Austria-Hungary, which, like wide-open jaws of a hungry dragon, seemed to threaten to swallow it up. Everything I saw in Austria-Hungary looked small and shrivelled up, but Belgrade looked to me as if its proud head would touch the stars. The history of the long-suffering Serb race was grouped around it, and that lifted it up in my imagination to sublime heights. I was much tempted to stop there and climb up to the top of Mount Avala, near Belgrade, and from there send my greetings to heroic Serbia, just as I had sent my greetings to heroic Switzerland from the top of snow-covered Titlis. But I was told to look sharp if I wished to catch the last local boat to Panchevo, and so I bade good-by and au revoir to white-towered Belgrade, as the Serbian guslars call it.
When the local boat arrived in Panchevo a delegation of young men, including one of the Serb students who had come with me from Budapest, transferred me to another boat, which was crowded with what looked like a gay wedding-party. The singing society of Panchevo had chartered this boat to take it and its friends to Karlovci, where a great national gathering of Serbs was to take place on the following day. The earthly remains of the great Serb poet Branko Radichevich were to arrive there from Vienna, where, when still a youth, he died and had been buried thirty years before. His body was to be transferred to and buried near Karlovci, on Strazhilovo hill, which was glorified by his immortal verses. His lyrics were messages to all Serbs, calling upon them to nurse their traditions and prepare for their national reunion. Representative Serbs from all parts of Serbdom were to assemble in Karlovci to escort the earthly remains of the popular poet to his last resting-place. I was to represent America, hence the invitation to join the Panchevo delegation. Serb nationalism flamed up in my heart again.
Our boat arrived at Karlovci in the early hours of the following morning, and there we found many singing societies and delegates from Voyvodina, Serbia, Bosnia, Hercegovina, and Montenegro—a most picturesque gathering of splendid-looking young men and women, many of them in their national costumes of brilliant colors. The funeral procession started early in the afternoon. The singing societies from the principal centres of Serbdom, lined up in the march in proper succession, took up in turn the singing of the solemn and wonderfully harmonious funeral hymn: “Holy God, almighty God, immortal God, have mercy upon us.”
The Orthodox church permits no instrumental music. Those who have had the good fortune to listen to Russian choirs know the power and the spiritual charm of their choral singing. Serb choirs are not their inferiors. No music appeals to our hearts so strongly as the music of the human voice. Every one of the singers in that procession at Karlovci felt that he was paying his last vocal tribute to the sacred memory of the national poet, and his voice rose up to the heavens above as if carried there by the wings of his inspired soul. The effect was irresistible, and there was not a single dry eye in the great national gathering. A dismembered nation united in tears was a most solemn and inspiring spectacle. One could not help feeling that these tears were welcome to the thirsty soil which nourished the roots of Serb nationalism. A nation which is united in song and in tears will never lose its unity. If the governments of Vienna and Budapest had foreseen the emotions which that solemn ceremony would arouse in the hearts of that vast and representative gathering coming from every part of the dismembered Serbdom, they would never have permitted it. But that would have meant the exercise of the perceptions of subtle psychology, which these governments never had.
When the boat returned to Panchevo, Protoyeray Zhivkovich, the poet-priest, who had first suggested my transference from Panchevo to Prague, was watching for my arrival, and received me with tears of joy in his eyes. He was a protecting friend and adviser of my boyhood days, and he always considered himself indirectly responsible for my wandering away to the distant shores of America. When I thanked him for the choice feast which he had prepared for me, he assured me that his feast was only a feast of food, whereas the feast which I spread out before him when I answered his questions about America was a feast for his soul. I certainly did it, if I interpreted correctly the luminous flashes of his intelligent eyes. He was a man of about sixty, but his vigorous eye was still just as eloquent as the stirring verses of his younger days. “Tell your mother,” he said, “that I am happy to bear the whole responsibility for your wandering away to distant America. It is no longer distant; it is now in my heart; you have brought America to us. It was a new world in my terrestrial geography; it is now a new world in my spiritual geography.” His generous enthusiasm threatened to undo some of the sobering effects of Niven’s conference at Cambridge. During my several visits at his house that summer I had to repeat again and again my description of Beecher and of his sermons. He called him the brother of Joan of Arc of the new spiritual world; her flaming sword, he said, was “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
My older sister and her husband drove to Panchevo and escorted me to Idvor. When Idvor’s territory was reached I begged them to make a detour which would take me through the pasturelands and vineyards of Idvor, where I had seen my happiest boyhood days. There, as if in a dream, I saw the boys of Idvor watching herds of oxen just as I used to do, and playing the same games which I used to play. The vineyards, the summer sky above them, and the river Tamish in the distance, where I had learned to swim and dive, looked the same as ever. Presently the familiar church-spire of Idvor hove in sight, and gradually the sweet sound of the church-bells, announcing vespers, awakened countless memories in my mind and I found it difficult to control my emotions. As we drove slowly through little Idvor everything looked exactly as it had looked eleven years before. There were no new houses, and the old ones looked as old as ever. The people were doing the same work which they always did during that season of the year, and they were doing it in the same way. When we reached the village green I saw the gate of my mother’s yard wide open, a sign that she expected a welcome guest. She sat alone on the bench under a tree in front of her house, and waited, looking in the direction from which she expected me to come. When she saw my sister’s team, I observed that suddenly she raised her white handkerchief to her eyes, and my sister whispered to me: “Mayka plache!” (“Mother is weeping!”) I jumped out of the wagon and hastened to embrace her. Oh, how wonderful is the power of tears, and how clear is our spiritual vision when a shower of tears has purified the turbulent atmosphere of our emotions! Mother’s love and love for mother are the sweetest messages of God to the living earth.
Everything in Idvor looked the same, but my mother had changed; she looked much older, and much more beautiful. There was a saintly light in her eyes which disclosed to me the serene firmament of the spiritual world in which she lived. Raphael and Titian, I thought, never painted a more beautiful saint. I gazed and worshipped and felt most humble. “Come,” she said, “and walk with me; we shall be alone; I want to hear your voice and see the light of your face, undisturbed.” We walked slowly, and my mother recalled many things, reminding me of the familiar objects of my boyhood days, as: “Here is the path on which you walked to school; there is the church where you read the epistles on Sundays and holidays; there is the mill with the funnel-shaped thatched roof from the top of which you once removed the shining new tin star, imagining that it was a star from heaven; there is the house where Baba Batikin, of blessed memory, lived and taught you so many ancient tales; there is the house where old Aunt Tina cured your whooping-cough with charms and with herbs steeped in honey; here lived old Lyubomir, of blessed memory, who was so fond of you, and made your sheepskin coats and caps; here is the field where every evening you brought our horses to the chikosh (the village herdsman) to take them to the pasturelands.”
By that time we had reached the end of the little village, but my mother prolonged our leisurely walk and presently we stood at the gate of the village cemetery. Pointing to a cross of red marble my mother said that it marked the grave of my father. When we reached it I kissed the cross, and, kneeling upon the grave, I prayed. My mother, loyal to Serb traditions, addressed the grave, saying: “Kosta, my faithful husband, here is your boy whom you loved more dearly than your own life, and whose name was on your lips when you breathed your last. Accept his prayer and his tears as his affectionate tribute to your blessed memory, which he will cherish forever.”
On the way back we stopped at the church and kissed the icons of our patron saint and of St. Sava, and lighted two wax candles which mother had brought with her. I confessed to her that I felt as if a sacred communion had reunited me with the spirit of Idvor. That was her wish, she said, because she did not want Idvor to think that I was like a proud stranger from a proud, strange land. “I did not recognize you,” she said, “when I first saw you in your sister’s wagon until you smiled with the smile of your boyhood days, and then I shed the sweetest tears of my life. You looked so learned and so far above us plain folks of Idvor that nobody will recognize the Misha they used to know, and whom they long to see, unless you show them the boy that they used to know.” My promise to return to Idvor “rich in learning and academic honors” was evidently made good, according to my mother’s opinion. But did not this learning and these academic honors carry with them an air which did not harmonize with the old-fashioned notions of Idvor? This, I believed, was in my mother’s mind, and I made a careful note of it.
Idvor came to see me, and it assured me that there was no youngster in all the great plains of Voyvodina who was nearer to the heart of his native village than Misha. This affectionate regard was won by my strict observance of all the old customs of Idvor, as, for instance, kissing the hand of the old people of Idvor, and in return being kissed by them on the forehead. On the other hand, young peasant boys and girls of Idvor kissed my hand, and I kissed them on the cheek and petted them. My cousin, much older than I, was an ex-soldier and a stern Knez (chief) of the village. He was the oldest male member and, therefore, the head of the Pupins. I was expected to keep this in mind constantly, and I did it whenever I stood in his mighty presence. American citizenship eliminated my allegiance to the Emperor of Austria-Hungary but not to the autocratic Knez of Idvor. There was another great person in Idvor whose presence inspired awe. He was my koum (godfather). My mother had lost all her children that were born in her earlier years, and was left childless for many years. She then bore two daughters when she was over thirty. I was born when she was over forty, in answer to her fervent prayer, she firmly believed, that God grant her a son. A boy born late in life, if he is to live, must, according to a popular belief in Idvor, be handed out through the front window to the first person who comes along, and that person has to carry the baby to church quickly and have it baptized. In this manner a very poor and humble peasant of Idvor became my koum. A koum’s authority over his godchild is, theoretically at least, unlimited, according to Serbian custom. In practice, a godchild must eat humble pie when the koum is present. Between my cousin, who, as Knez, was at the head of the village, and my koum, who was somewhere near the bottom of the village, I had some difficulty to steer the correct course of conduct. I succeeded, thanks to my efforts to please my mother; and the peasants of Idvor most cheerfully admitted that America must be a fine Christian country, since it had given me a training which harmonized so well with the Christian traditions of Idvor. My presidency in the junior year at Columbia College, my undisputed authority among some of the young aristocrats of New York, and the many scholastic successes in my academic career had sown some seeds of vanity and false pride in my heart. But these seeds were smothered by the inexorable rigors of Idvor’s traditions. Humility is the cardinal virtue in a youth among the peasants of Idvor.
Needless to say, the story of my life since I had left Idvor was retold many a time, until my mother and my sisters knew it by heart. It was sweet music to their ears. I enjoyed it, too, because summer evenings in a Serbian garden are most conducive to the spinning out of reminiscent tales. The village worthies spent many Sunday afternoons in my mother’s garden asking many, many a question about America. Tales about things like the Brooklyn Bridge, the elevated railroad, the tall buildings in New York, and the agricultural operations of the West were received with many expressions of wonder, but at times also, I thought, with some reserve. A simple peasant mind could not accept without considerable reserve the statement that a machine can cut, bind, and load the seasoned wheat, all at the same time, with nothing but a few stupid horses to drag it along. After a while my store of information became exhausted, and I had much less to say, but the wise men of Idvor urged me to go on. They met my apologies with the statement that peasant Ghiga had never left Idvor in all his life until one day he went to a neighboring village, about ten miles away, and saw the county fair. He returned to Idvor on the same day, and for six weeks he never ceased talking about the great things which he had seen at that county fair. “Just imagine,” said the priest, “how much he would have had to say if he had been nine years in great America!”
I was overwhelmed with invitations to attend concerts and festivals in many places of my native Banat, and when I attended I was often called upon to say something about America, and, of course, I spoke about my favorite subject: “The American Doctrine of Freedom.” People talked and papers wrote about it. One day the Fehispan, the governor of Torontal, where Idvor belonged under the new division of Hungary, sent for me, and appointed the hour for a conference. I went, carrying my American citizenship papers and my Columbia diploma in my pocket. When I entered his office I saw a handsome young man of about thirty, quite athletic in appearance, and looking like an English aristocrat in dress and in manner. I was told beforehand that he was a young Hungarian nobleman who prided himself upon his English university training. I wondered how he would act when he saw before him a Serb youth from the peasant village of Idvor who prided himself upon his American college training. He looked puzzled when I entered and saluted him with a Serbian “Dobroytro gospodine!” (“Good morning, sir”), accompanying my salute with an Anglo-Saxon bow, that is a jerky motion of the head from the shoulders up. The bow of continental Europe is much more elaborate. After some hesitation he asked me to sit down, and then, as if by an afterthought, he brought a chair himself and offered it to me. We spoke in English, since I did not understand Hungarian, and he did not care to speak Serb. By way of introduction I showed him my American citizenship papers and my diploma, and he remarked that these documents agreed with my appearance and manner, adding quickly that he meant a compliment. He asked me how I liked Idvor and Hungary. Then I told him that I never had known much about Hungary, but that Budapest and even its famous bridge looked to me small and shrivelled up, probably because I compared things there with things in New York. “It is big enough, is it not, to be the metropolis of the southern Slavs in Hungary?” he asked. “It undoubtedly is,” said I, “but somewhat inconvenient and unnatural.” I volunteered this opinion, seeing from his somewhat inquisitorial manner that he knew much about my doings, and that he had heard of my salute to Belgrade when my boat from Budapest approached it a month earlier.
“This, I suppose, is the doctrine which you preached at Karlovci, at the national gathering there?” asked the handsome and genial inquisitor, and I answered: “No; I had no time; I was too busy carrying the body of the great poet to Strazhilovo. Besides, the Karlovci ceremony itself was really a grand sermon which glorified that doctrine, and some day it may prevail, when the slow mind of the southern Slav wakes up and does the natural thing.” “The quick mind of the Hungarian crown may wake up sooner and do the natural thing,” said the young Fehispan, and added: “What you say now confirms my information that in your public utterances you deny the divine right of the crown and proclaim the divine right of the people.” “That is one of the messages of our American Declaration of Independence,” said I, “and I delivered that message to people here who were anxious to hear something about America.” Then I added that Kossuth, while in America, was glorifying the divine right of the Hungarian people and denying the divine right of the Hapsburg crown in Hungary. I had heard this and many other Hungarian democratic doctrines from Henry Ward Beecher, who was a great friend and admirer of Kossuth, and I told him that. He saw that my trigger was ready if he attempted any further moves in this direction. “You are certainly frank and honest, like all real Americans that I know; that makes them most attractive. But why don’t you naturalized Americans mind your own business when you visit us?” He was much less stern and serious when he said this, and I was only too glad to play a more cheerful tune, and said: “Our most important business here is our mission to make you, our poor relations here, happy and prosperous by having you adopt the American point of view.”
He was a wealthy Hungarian magnate who owned several villages, each of them bigger than Idvor, and this answer coming from a son of poor Idvor amused him much. From that moment on our conference was much less formal, and became even cordial when he offered me coffee and cigarettes. I jokingly told him that Magyarism and Teutonism had driven me away from Panchevo and Prague, and now that I was back for a visit I wished to pay them back with a little present of a few American ideas. “Your American ideas,” he retorted jokingly, “will make you even less popular here than your Serb nationalism did eleven years ago. Drop them while you are here. You’ll have more fun shooting wild ducks in the lowlands of the Tamish River near Idvor than clearing up to dullards the American point of view. The duck season is on, and it is a pity to miss a single day. I’ll lend you an American gun which is just right for that sort of business.” He did, and that gun kept me busy and saved him the trouble of watching my movements. The village notary accompanied me on my shooting tramps; he was an expert fisherman and shot, and spared no pains to please me and—the Fehispan. A two weeks’ tramp in the marshes of the Tamish River, chasing the elusive duck, diminished my haste to harmonize the political point of view of the Serbs in the Voyvodina with American ideas.
When the vintage was over, toward the end of September, I made ready to start for Cambridge. I was sorry to leave, because the merry season in Voyvodina is on when the vintage is over and the new wine has ceased fermenting. The golden crops are then all in, and the lazy pigs are fat and round, and ready to be served at wedding-feasts. In other lands it is the springtime when the young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love; in the Serb Voyvodina it is the autumn season which has that mysterious power. It is in the autumn when marriage-bells never cease ringing, and the bagpipes with the merry songs of wedding-feasts stir up the hearts from one end of the Banat plains to the other. But my mother diverted my attention to more serious thoughts, and she assured me that she was even more happy preparing me for my journey to Cambridge than she was when, eleven years before, she was preparing me for my journey to Prague.
A few days prior to my departure the village worthies prepared a fish-supper in my honor. The Tamish fishermen cooked it in their traditional way over a wood fire burning under the open sky. The little supper-party reached the fishermen’s hut on the bank of the Tamish River just about sunset. The western sky was all aglow with the golden light of the parting day, and so was the surface of the tranquil Tamish River, made luminous by the image of the western sky. The rest of the landscape looked dark by contrast, excepting the glowing faces of the patient supper-party, who sat around the busy fires and watched the boiling kettles and the broiling pans. At some distance, and standing at the very end of a fisherman’s barge, was the dark silhouette of a tall young shepherd, who stood there lonely like some solitary dark spectre hovering over the golden surface of the Tamish River. It was just the spot for one who sought seclusion and longed for quiet meditation. No ripple in the water or in the air disturbed his dreams, if he had any, and I thought that he had. His sheep had been watered, and he had finished his frugal supper long ago, before the light of the day had retired below the distant horizon line of the Banat plains. The silence of the approaching night awakened emotions which only his tuneful flute could express, and suddenly he poured his soul into a melody which surely was not addressed to mere phantoms of the vacuous space. I felt that the quivering air was conveying through the evening silence a message of love to some maiden, who was perhaps just then spinning under some thatched roof of drowsy Idvor and thinking of him. The priest approached me to tell me that the fish was ready and that the feast would soon begin. I told him that my feast had already begun and called his attention to the heavenly melody. He said: “Oh, that’s Gabriel, the son of my neighbor Milutin. He entered the village school when you left Idvor, and he finished it long ago. He will be married on St. Michael’s day, and what you hear now is his sefdalia (song of sighs) for his future bride, who is over there in our drowsy village.” When he jokingly suggested that I might be looking forward to the enjoyment of the sweets of simple pastoral life which were in store for Gabriel, if I had not turned my back on Idvor eleven years before, I answered that perhaps it was not too late to correct the error. The priest looked astonished, and asked me whether I had crossed and recrossed the Atlantic in order to become a shepherd of Idvor. I said nothing, but I knew that Gabriel’s melody had disclosed to me another world in which the question “What is Light?” is by no means the most important question. There were other great questions of human life, the answers to which can perhaps be found in Idvor without a knowledge of Maxwell’s electrical theory.