then is the Csik or Szeklerland a still more odd corner; by no possibility can it ever be the highroad to anywhere else.  I am not surprised that my lawyer friend said that there were still some lawsuits pending in connection with the allotments of forest and pasturage in this part of Hungary, though everything was definitely settled elsewhere.  The Szekler is as troublesome and turbulent in some respects as his own mountain streams; added to which he dearly loves a lawsuit:  it is in the eyes of the peasant a patent of respectability, as keeping a gig formerly was in England.

“Why do you go to law about such a trifle?” observed a friend of mine to his neighbour.

“Well, you see I have never had a lawsuit, as all my neighbours have had about something or another; so, now there is the chance, I had better have one myself!”

It is well for the lawyers that there is “a good deal of human nature” everywhere, especially in Hungary, otherwise they would have a bad time of it, where the legal expenses of “transfer” are a few florins, whether it be for an acre of vineyard or for half a comitat.  I must observe, however, that in the sale of lands or houses, Government intervenes with a heavy tax on the transaction.

Leaving my hospitable entertainers at Csik Szent Marton, I went on to Csik Szereda, where I was kindly taken in by the postmaster.  In this case I was provided with a letter; but a stranger would naturally go to the postmaster or the clergyman to ask for a night’s lodging.  At first I felt diffident on this score; but I soon got over my shyness, for in Szeklerland they make a stranger so heartily welcome that he ceases to regard himself as an intruder.  In out-of-the-way places one is looked upon as a sort of heaven-sent “special correspondent.”  There is a story told of Baron ——­, one of the nearly extinct old-fashioned people, who regularly, an hour or so before the dinner-hour, rides along the nearest highroad to try and catch a guest.  It has even been whispered that on one occasion a couple of intelligent-looking travellers, who declined to be “retained” for dinner, were severely beaten for their recalcitrant behaviour, by order of the hospitable Baron.  The story is well founded, and I daresay took place before ’48, when anything might have happened.

I can bear witness that I have never myself been ill-treated for declining Hungarian hospitality, but when in Saxonland something very much the reverse occurred to me.  I once entered a village at the end of a long day’s ride, and stopping at the first house, asked for a night’s lodging, whereupon I was told to ask at the next house.  They said they could not take me in, excusing themselves on the score of an important domestic event being expected.  I went on a little farther, though the “shades of night were falling fast,” and repeated my request at the next house.  I give you my word, there were more domestic events—­always the same excuse.  I began to calculate that the population must be rapidly on the increase in that place.  It was too much.  I entered the last house of that straggling village with a stern resolve that not even new-born twins should bar my claim to hospitality!