Introductory Note.
Through the kindness of William N. Loew, Esq., of the New York Bar, who has generously placed the manuscript at our disposal, we are able to offer a translation of one of the shorter stories by a living Hungarian writer.
The Magyar literature offers a mine of gold to the translator, but on account of the difficulties of the language very few have explored it. With the exception of the great novelist, Maurus Jókai, the works of the majority of the first class authors are unknown to the average American reader.
The difficulties of the Magyar tongue have been referred to. It is the one great literary language of Europe that is of non-Aryan origin. It is syllabic agglutinative, that is, the word inflections are made up by adding syllables to the root word that is never lost. The verb is particularly flexible and many of the tenses cannot be rendered adequately in English because they are constructed after a different system. The fine distinctions possible for the Magyar verb can only be felt, and not translated. This will explain the seeming inconsistency of the tenses in our story, where presents, futures, and perfects appear to be used indiscriminately, and yet the whole action has taken place in the more or less remote past. In this way the translator has endeavored to convey the vivid action of the original so far as the English verb system would allow him.
The author, Kálmán Mikszáth, is a follower of Jókai, but without the great master's originality. He has been called the "Mark Twain" of Magyar literature, and is looked upon by his compatriots as their leading humorist. He is a prolific writer of the feuilliton