class="chapsum">All things pass away, but science remains eternal,

PRETTY MICHAL.

CHAPTER I.

Wherein is shown how sagely the Rev. Master Fröhlich brought up his motherless daughter, pretty Michal.

In the days when the Turkish Sultan ruled in Hungary as far as Ersekujvar and Eger, the German Kaiser from Eger to the Zips country, and George Rakoczy, Prince of Transylvania, from Zips to the Szeklerland—all three of whom were perpetually fighting among themselves, sometimes two against one and sometimes all together indiscriminately, so that the inhabitants had a very lively time of it—in those days (somewhere about 1650) the learned and reverend Master David Fröhlich was the pride of the Keszmár Lyceum and Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy there. Master Fröhlich knew everything which could be reasonably expected of a man. He knew how to calculate solar and lunar eclipses. He knew how to take the old town-clock to pieces when it got out of order and put it together again. He could fix the weather for a whole year beforehand. He understood the aureus calculus and could cast a horoscope with any man living. He knew by heart which trades could be carried on best in each of the twelve months. He had at his fingers' ends the arcana and secret properties of all herbs and plants, could explain sympathies and antipathies, nay, he could be implicitly trusted in the manufacture of amulets.

But his most difficult science was that of which we are now about to speak.

He had one beautiful daughter whom he had brought up without the help of a mother, and that, surely, is a feat of which any man might be proud! His wife had died on the very day on which she had given birth to the child, and the widower had forthwith steadily set before himself the problem of educating the girl without the slightest female intervention.

The way in which he managed by artificial contrivances to find a substitute for mother's milk was a miracle of itself; but even that was as nothing compared with the masterly system of education which he himself invented and applied, in order to make his daughter grow up a discreet and modest maiden, despite the grievous want of maternal supervision. For he would neither marry again, nor trust his daughter to female nurses and servants, nor even admit any of his own kinswomen into the house.

He inaugurated his system at her very baptism, by giving his daughter the name of Michal. At first hearing, everyone, of course, takes this for a man's name, never suspecting that a damsel lurks behind it; perhaps only one among a thousand even knows that it is a girl's name after all. Was not one of the wives of King David called Michal?—she, I mean, who laughed when she saw the great King dancing in the street. So the reverend and learned gentleman christened his little daughter Michal, arguing that the Evil One would not so lightly venture to tackle a name with such a masculine ring about it.

Then he personally instructed his daughter in all good things from her babyhood upward. She never went to school. Everything, from the alphabet to the catechism, she learnt at home. Later on, as the damsel's mind grew stronger, he taught her not only the Latin and Greek tongues, but all the sciences which are useful and necessary in life; e. g., the tabular calculations as to how much meat, butter, meal, peas, grain, salt, etc., a prudent housewife should dispense for two, four, eight, sixteen, etc., persons per day, week, or month, so that the domestics may neither suffer hunger nor yet overload their stomachs (N. B., salt must be particularly well looked after lest the mice get at it, for everyone knows that when mice eat salt they multiply prodigiously); item, wherewith to feed the livestock; how much meal and bran should be got in exchange from the miller for so much wheat; how to prepare yeast, knead dough, bake bread, not forgetting to always turn the tub toward the north. And bread making in the Highlands of North Hungary was a serious business in those days, for rye meal was often scarce, and bread had to be made of spelt, buckwheat, sweet peas, and other disgusting things. Galen especially recommends bean meal bread. Dioscorides, on the other hand, prefers a judicious admixture of onions. Nay, in hard times, when no corn is to be had, poor people must be prepared to make bread of dried quinces, medlars, elderberries, hips and haws, and fungus, while the clergy and people of quality must be content with honey bread, maize bread, or even oil cakes. Flesh bread, too, of which Pliny so much approves, may be used occasionally, or curd bread, which was the favorite dish of Zoroaster. The Rev. Master Fröhlich also taught his daughter how to preserve fruit, and how to convert it into blue, green, red, and yellow jellies, without using any injurious pigments.

Moreover in these sciences beer brewing was also included, for the ladies of Keszmár were wont to make their own ale. Every citizen there owed his beer to his wife and daughter. No one ever thought of getting it from the inn.

Nor was that all. It was part of every good housewife's business in those days to keep in store all manner of medicines, and to know how to concoct health-giving cordials from hundreds of wonder-working herbs. To them the medical science was far from being the finger and thumb work which our modern doctors make it, who, after prescribing you a dozen doses or so of ipecacuanha against fever, hold themselves absolved from all further responsibility. Our grandmothers had efficacious cordials against every malady under the sun, and in cases of serious illness they dosed the patient with the infallible elixir known as Galen's specific, the principal ingredients of which were Oriental pearls, red coral, and emeralds powdered fine, cubeb balsam, lignum aloes, muscat blossoms, frankincense, musk, bezoar, manus Christi, flesh-colored rose leaves, oil of cinnamon, and kirmis berries. Extraordinary, indeed, was the amount of knowledge which the housewife of yore had to carry about in her noddle!

And besides the generally recognized alphabets of our own days there were, at that time, three-and-thirty other symbols, the signification whereof every good cook was bound to know by heart before she could mix her ingredients. An oval with a stroke through it meant "salt"; a square with a cross beneath it, "cream of tartar"; a square with a horn, "oil"; a horseshoe, "spirits of wine"; an oblong, "soap"; one triangle, "spring water"; two triangles, point to point, "distilled water"; a crown with a star, "regulus stellatus." Without a knowledge of this science, no woman was regarded as perfect.

And then again the various kinds of aquavitæ! Nowadays most of us do not even know the proper meaning of the term; then, their manifold and salutary effects were universally recognized and appreciated. Everyone knew, for instance, that they kept the blood warm and fluid; removed all venom; dried up all sluggish humors; strengthened the memory, etc. Then there were various mysterious oils, the most costly of which was victriol (quite a different thing from vitriol), which our great-grandmothers called "potable gold," to say nothing of a multitude of waters, vinegars, acids, antidotes, plasters, and pastils no reputable housewife could afford to be without, for was she not the natural doctor and nurse of the whole family?

And the art of cookery was not a whit less abstruse than