It is a very pretty custom, this one of the Harvest Festival; and master and laborer enter into the spirit of it with keen zest. It but endears their patron to them the more that he permits this privilege; the ransom is not more than a few pennies; but the master must pay it before he may regain his liberty. All over the estate, from one field to the other, the same ceremony is indulged in for the harvest crops. What merry-making there is in the village during the rest of the day and all through the evening, after the crops are safely stowed away for the winter! The fairest maiden of the village is the queen of the day. She wears her white dress with a queenly air, too; and holds her proud head high, crowned with flowers. Forming in line, the queen at the head, the bridesmaids following, and then the other villagers in the order of their importance, the gay procession marches slowly up the hill, singing folk songs as they mount. Their sweet, musical voices announce their arrival long beforehand to the mistress of the dwór. She meets them at the porch with graciousness. The queen kneels for her mistress' blessing, and once more they return down the hill toward the village, but now they are enriched with a quantity of small money, with which they straightway proceed to set up a supper, after which they dance the rest of the hours away. They have good cause to be light-hearted, for they know their work is finished for the season, and there are full barns for the winter. * * * * * And we have now spent a full year in the delightful, quaint land of Lekh; dear Poland, from whose brow has never vanished the one cloud that mars it. It has learned its tragic lesson too late, that what it does not sow it may not reap. The nobles had been too much enwrapped in their own gayety, in their exclusiveness, to turn their hands to the task of setting things straight. The bourgeoisie were neither of one class nor another; they could not afford to compromise themselves by turning either way, consequently they turned neither, and were useless as aids. The peasants were raised in ignorance, were overburdened and kept constantly under the leash, so to speak, and while their strength might have saved the country, they had not the brain-power to solve a means therefor. So that neither of the three brothers being able to decide which should blow upon the flute, as neither class would take upon itself to save the land, so they now await the decision. In the meantime, Poland belongs to the three conquering nations, the Russians, the Austrians and the Germans, neither of which the Polacks are devoted to.