Children of the Soil

Генрик Сенкевич

Henryk Sienkiewicz

Children of the Soil

TO HIS EXCELLENCY, HON. FREDERIC T. GREENHALGE, Governor of Massachusetts

Sir, – You are at the head of a Commonwealth renowned for mental culture; you esteem the Slav Race and delight in good literature; – to you I beg to dedicate this volume, in the hope that it will give pleasure to you and to others in that State which you govern so acceptably.

В В В В JEREMIAH CURTIN

Warren, Vermont,

April 19, 1895.

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

The title of this book in the original is Rodzina Polanieckich (The Family of the Polanyetskis); “Children of the Soil” has been substituted, because of the difficulty of the Polish title for American and English readers, because the Polanyetskis are called children of the soil in the text of the volume, and because all the other characters are children of the soil in the same sense.

For most readers this book will have a double interest, – the interest attaching to a picture of Polish life, and the general human interest inseparable from characters like those presented in the narrative of Pan Stanislav’s fortunes.

The Poles form a part of the great Slav race, which has played so important a rôle in the world’s history already, and which is destined to play a far more important one yet in the future.

The argument involved in the career and meditations of Pan Stanislav is of interest to every person in civilized society; it is an argument presented so clearly, and reinforced with such pointed examples, that neither comment nor explanation is needed.

Were it not for the change of title, I might escape even this brief statement; but now I may add that the following translation was made in many places, in different countries, at various intervals, and at moments snatched from other work. I began “Children of the Soil” in Cahirciveen, Ireland, and continued it in London, Edinburgh, Fort William near the foot of Ben Nevis, Rome, Naples, and Florence, Tsarskoe Selo, Russia, and South Uist, an island of the Outer Hebrides. From the Outer Hebrides I was called home before I wished to come, and left that little granite kingdom in the Atlantic with sincere regret.

The translation was finished in Warren, Vermont, and revised carefully. To new readers of Sienkiewicz I may state that Pan, Pani, and Panna, when prefixed to names, mean Mr., Mrs., and Miss respectively.

В В В В JEREMIAH CURTIN.

CHAPTER I

It was the first hour after midnight when Pan Stanislav Polanyetski was approaching the residence in Kremen. During years of childhood he had been twice in that village, when his mother, a distant relative of the present owner of Kremen, was taking him home for vacation. Pan Stanislav tried to remember the place, but to do so was difficult. At night, by the light of the moon, everything took on an uncertain form. Over the bushes, fields, and meadows, a white mist was lying low, changing the whole region about into a shoreless lake, as it were, – an illusion increased by choruses of frogs in the mist.

It was a July night, very calm and perfectly bright. At moments, when the frogs became silent, landrails were heard playing in the dew; and at times, from afar, from muddy ponds, hidden behind reeds, the call of the bittern sounded as if coming from under the earth.

Pan Stanislav could not resist the charm of that night. It seemed to him familiar in some way; and that familiarity he felt all the more, since he had returned only the previous year from abroad, where he had spent his first youth and had become engaged afterward in mercantile matters. Now, while entering that sleeping village, he recalled his childhood, memorable through his mother, now five years dead, and because the bitterness and cares of that childhood, compared with the present, seemed perfect bliss to him.

At last the brichka rolled up toward the village, which began with a cross standing on a sand mound. The cross, inclining greatly, seemed ready to fall. Pan Stanislav remembered it because in his time under that m