Freethinkers belongs to the middle ages, to the shadows of cathedrals. It is touching to watch the pride with which they love this piece of American soil. All the thoughts and memories of their old home, that are so dear to them, seem to be thought more easily and better in this garden of the dead, for something died within them when they left their homes. The pure memory lives as the memory of those who have left them forever and sleep under that velvety grass, under the brightest autumn leaves and the faithful asters. Education.The school to which the rising generation goes is of special interest to the American public. Generally speaking, the Catholics send their children to parochial schools (at least for a couple of years) and the Freethinkers to public schools. There are eight Bohemian parochial schools in Chicago with almost three thousand children. Bohemian and English are taught and they are supported mostly by the parishioners. The Freethinkers have schools either on Sundays, or on Saturday and Sunday — a system which seems to me, if reformed, would answer the needs. If constructed on modern principles of pedagogy, the teaching in these two days (or even one day a week) would give to the children born in America the strength of respect for the land of their parents by making them acquainted with its noblemen and women, and with the Bohemian language in its purity. These schools are supported by the mutual benefit societies, which are represented in ten committees, each of which supports one school, not only providing a teacher, but erecting the school buildings with large halls, lodges, etc. Further, a system of Sunday-schools is developed by the committee for the benefit of Freethinkers' schools.
The parochial scbool system seems to be a system that has to be overcome, the Saturday and Sunday, a system that has to be reformed not in the dogmatic free thinking way, but in a really freethinking and therefore spiritual way.
The best element of the Bohemians in Chicago asked for a public reading-room in their district. After a great manifestation meeting, while we were waiting for a car, I overheard one of the experts use the following sentence: "All this is just the wish of a few people, the majority does not bother." The attendance since has shown the opposite. The first month it was over eight thousand—a number unparalleled at any other station in Chicago. Good books are needed—not to keep the Bohemians a foreign element in the city, but to give them the opportunity to develop fully their own capabilities.
Not all immigrants will learn English and the American public owes something to those quiet, old, working and loving mothers, who are such a gigantic force in the lives of the young Americans—though they remain unseen by an outsider.
We have a proverb: "As you call into the woods, so the woods respond." Do not call through the political campaign and its chicanery. Call in a noble way, Yours will be the echo!
III.
The West was burning in a reddish, golden glow. Broken sentences in English and in the Bohemian tongue rang in my ear. I turned down from Eighteenth street into a small, quiet street. Behind a vacant lot, fresh and green after a recent storm, the silhouettes of the houses, the needle of the slender church stood dark against the burning West.
My thoughts turned to the pale East and took their unrestricted flight. They crossed the ocean that stretched out quietly, the moon threw silver lights into its waves, the gulls went to bed. My thoughts reached the distant shore; they flew over the flat land of Germany, over the fragrant fir-trees on the borderland, the fertile fields of Bohemia; they stood with bewitched step among the old walls of Prague.
The East must be slightly lighting up there; the mist lies over the town; the steps of an early walker resound within the old walls. Over the hundred-towered city the well-known outline of the castle is visible. And the East is growing lighter, lighter.
The Bohemians have a longing for truth, just because they went through the purgatory of lie of others toward themselves—themselves towards others.
This longing is the dowry the land gives to its emigrants.
