The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893: An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr — John Shaqi
The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893: An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert BarrVarious
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The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893: An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr
Various
London (England) -- Periodicals
describing the scenic panorama of the great river in the pages of
_Harper_, those of you who have read those sketches will not have failed
to notice how Millet talked to German, Hungarian, Servian, Bulgarian,
Roumanian, and Turkish, each in his own tongue, those diverse languages
having been acquired by him during the few months of the
Russo-Turkish war.
[Illustration: "MACGAHAN AND FRANK MILLET."]
By this time, you may be wondering just where "Andreas" comes in.
Perhaps I have been over long in getting to my specific subject; but I
will not be discursive any more. It was at the _table d'hote_ in the
Serbische Krone Hotel, in Belgrade, where I first set eyes on Andreas.
In the year 1876, Servia had thought proper to throw off the yoke of her
Turkish suzerain, and to attempt to assert her independence by force of
arms. But for very irregularly paid tribute she was virtually
independent already, and probably in all Servia there were not two
hundred Turks. But she ambitiously desired to have the name of as well
as the actuality of being independent; the Russians helped her with
arms, officers, and volunteer soldiers; and when I reached Belgrade, in
May of the year named, there had already been fighting, in which the
Servians had by no means got the worst. No word of the Servian tongue
had I, and it was the reverse of pleasant for a war correspondent in
such plight to learn that outside of Belgrade nobody, or at least hardly
anybody, knew a word of any other language than the native Servian. As I
ate, I was being attended by a very assiduous waiter, whose alertness
and anxiety to please were very conspicuous. He was smart with quite
un-Oriental smartness; he whisked about the tables with deftness; he
spoke to me in German, to the Russian officers over against me in what I
assumed was Russian, to the Servians dining behind me in what I took to
be Servian. I liked the look of the man; there was intelligence in his
aspect. One could not call him handsome, but there was character in the
keen black eye, the high features and the pronounced chin, fringed on
either side by bushy black whiskers.
[Illustration: "ANDREAS AS A FORAGER."]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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