A Bride of the Plains

“From the railway station far away the sharp clang of a bell...In half an hour the train starts, and there is so much still to say that has been left unsaid...The mothers, fearful and fussy, look for their sons in among the crowd like hens in search of their chicks; their wizened faces are hard and wrinkled like winter apples, they carry huge baskets on their arms, over-filled with the last delicacies which their fond, toil-worn hands will prepare for the beloved son for the next three years:--a piece of smoked bacon, a loaf of rye bread, a cake of maize-flour.The gypsies have struck up a melancholy Magyar folksong: the crowd breaks up in isolated groups, mothers and father with their sons whisper in the dark corners of the bran. The father who did his service thirty years ago gives sundry good advice”

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

“…in joy he will invariably dance; when he is in love he will dance, for the helps him to explain to the girl he loves exactly what he feels for her. And she understands. One will reveal to a Hungarian village maid the state of her lover’s heart far more clearly than do all the whisperings behind hedges in more civilized lands.””

— Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy