Dress makes the man, according to the Roumanian’s estimate, and rather than want for handsome clothes a man should deprive himself of food and drink. _Stomacul nu are oglinda_ (the stomach has no mirror), says their proverb; therefore the man who has no fitting costume to wear on Easter Sunday should hide himself rather than appear at church shabbily attired. [Illustration: ROUMANIAN WOMEN.] To be consistent with the Roumanian’s notion of cleanliness, his clothes should by rights be spun, woven, and made at home. Sometimes he may be obliged to purchase a cap or coat of a stranger, but in such cases he is careful to select a dealer of his own nationality. Roumanian women are very industrious, and they make far better domestic servants than either Hungarians or Saxons, the Germans living in towns often selecting them in preference to their own countrywomen. In some places you never see a Roumanian woman without her distaff; she even takes it with her to market, and may frequently be seen trudging along the high-road twirling the spindle as she goes. The men do not seem to share this love of labor, having, on the contrary, much of the Italian _lazzarone_ in their composition, and not taking to any kind of manual labor unless driven to it by necessity. The life of a shepherd is the only calling which the Roumanian embraces _con amore_, and his love for his sheep may truly be likened to the Arab’s love of his horse. A real Roumanian shepherd, bred and brought up to the life, has so completely identified himself with his calling that everything about him—food and dress, mind and matter—has, so to say, become completely “sheepified.” Sheep’s milk and cheese (called _brindza_) form the staple of his nourishment. His dress consists principally of sheepskin, four sheep furnishing him with the cloak which lasts him through life, one new-born lamb giving him the cap he wears; and when he dies the shepherd’s grave is marked by a tuft of snowy wool attached to the wooden cross above the mound. His whole mental faculties are concentrated on the study of his sheep, and so sharpened have his perceptions become in this one respect that he is able to divine and foretell to a nicety every change of the weather, merely from observing the demeanor of his flock. Forests have no charm for the shepherd, who, regarding everything from a pastoral point of view, sees in each tree an insolent intruder depriving his sheep of their rightful nourishment; and he covertly seeks to increase his pasture by setting fire to the woods whenever he can hope to do so with impunity. Whole tracts of noble forest have thus been laid waste, and it is much to be feared that half a century hence the country will present a bleak and desolate appearance, unless some means can be discovered in order to prevent this abuse. CHAPTER XXI. ROUMANIAN MARRIAGE AND MORALITY.