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came; our corn-mill was burnt down.
Then mother wept in secret, lest we children should see her. And she
worked without ceasing, fretted, and ended by falling ill. The doctors of the
whole neighbourhood around were called in to advise: they could do nothing
but charge fat fees; only one of them said:
“I won’t take payment from such poor people.”
Yes, in spite of all our jollity, we had become poor people. The goods and
chattels were all gone; of the once big property nothing remained to us but the
taxes. My father now resolved to sell the encumbered farm as well as he
could. But mother would not have it: she worked on, ill as she was, with
trouble and zeal, and never gave up hope. She could not bear to think of
giving up her home, the house where her children were born. She denied her
illness, said that she had never felt better in her life and that she would work
for three.
My brothers and sisters also considered that they could not leave the
homestead; besides, none of them had one good pair of shoes left to put on.
And mother, when, once in a way, she wished to go to the parish church, had
to borrow a jacket free from patches from some journeyman-woodman’s wife
or other. And the greatest pain of all was people’s arrogance and their scorn if
ever they did lend any assistance. They had forgotten the kindnesses which
my mother had once shown to one and all according to her power. At that
time, she was the most honoured farmer’s wife in all the houses in the forest.
But—misfortune destroys friendship! As, indeed, her mother, the charcoal-
burner, had often said.
I will relate an experience of that sad time, when my mother was ailing. It
begins with a bright and sunny Whitsuntide.
That bright and sunny Whit Monday was her thirty-ninth birthday. It was a
gladsome day. The crops were green in the fields; and the herds grazed in the
high meadow: true, they did not belong to us, but to our neighbour; and yet
we delighted in them, because they were fat and jolly. My father had already
paid last year’s taxes; the financial position, which had been disturbed during
father’s long illness, seemed gradually coming to rights; and consequently we
were once more rising in people’s opinions. On this day, we walked through
the meadows together; and the little ones picked flowers and the grown-ups
praised God’s works with a cheerful word or a song. Then mother sat down
on a stone and was like to die.
We dragged her home, we put her to bed, where she lay for long: weeks
long, months long. All the neighbours came and brought their well-meant
sympathy; all the doctors from near and far came and brought their well-
The Forest Farm
Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Titel
- The Forest Farm
- Untertitel
- Tales of the Austrian Tyrol
- Autor
- Peter Rosegger
- Verlag
- The Vineyard Press
- Ort
- London
- Datum
- 1912
- Sprache
- englisch
- Lizenz
- PD
- Abmessungen
- 21.0 x 29.7 cm
- Seiten
- 169
- Kategorien
- Geographie, Land und Leute
- International