pression,
Corner of Children’s Room. but they toss aside this noble inheritance of the Czech language and literature to grope in high school and college after other European languages with which their connection will never be anything but slight. The pathos of this situation is often seen in the library, where parents wish their children to read in English translation a book which the parent loves in the Czech original; while on the other hand children often wish to find for “my mother” a Bohemian translation of a favorite English book.
It is partly for the sake of these young people that the library tries to secure all worth while publications about Bohemia and the related Slav peoples, and their literatures. Notices of such books are furnished to the Bohemian newspapers and are invariably followed by requests from young people who say, “My father wants me to read this book about his native country”. Thus the library books form a link in the chain which connects the best in the past to the building up of the future.
As an interesting side result of its situation and work, the Broadway Library has come to be considered by the whole city as the headquarters for general information regarding the Bohemian people, and the branch librarian is at present engaged upon the preparation for the Cleveland Americanization Committee of a pamphlet upon “The Čechs of Cleveland”.
Czechoslovak Lace
By Emil Prantner.
It amazes a person familiar with the diversified industries of Bohemia to what extent the recognized and leading English speaking experts belittle or utterly ignore that country’s products. The lace industry of Bohemia is no exception. Mrs. Bury Palliser, a leading authority, in her “A History of Lace” (London, 1902), says:—“The modern laces of Bohemia are tasteless in design. The fabric is of an early date.” With less than one hundred words she disposed of the entire topic and is absolutely silent about the Bohemian lace accomplishments in the centuries long gone by.
It is rather singular, in face of Mrs. Palliser’s statement, that before the war, the shrewd expert buyers from the various European metropolises combed the Bohemian lace making districts and purchased all the insertions, edgings and imitation Irish point laces. In the world’s fashion marts these would be offered, at enormous advances and under fancy names, to prospective customers to adorn “milady’s” fashionable gowns and lingerie. Much of this lace found its way into the United States, mainly through German channels, for we must not forget that the entire American lace business was in the hands of adroit German merchants.
The lace industry of Bohemia is but a branch of the Slavonic art. The Slavs of Europe, the Russians, the Croatians, the Bohemians and the Slovaks developed this art to meet their individual tastes and needs. With them it was not an original useful branch, though it is reliably recorded that they “trimmed” their “costumes” with “embroideries” or “passementeries” as early as the eleventh century. To the Slavs it was an introduced art which was gradually made to conform to the needs
*) Written for the New York Herald.
