In a lively little article in the "Westminster Gazette," Mr. Lawrence Hyde gives an account of an evening in a Prague cafe:
The cafe as usual, was quiet, satisfyingly free from music, strident voices, clattering dominoes. In the corner near the door was the everlasting "little group of chess-players: the German who sat in such frightening, reptile. like immobility between each considered move, the expressionless veteran who forever watched,—whether from above or below one had no means of saying,—and the rest. Ab a table opposite had collected the band of artists, mostly young students, which was to be found there most evenings of the week. They differed and gesticulated, their direct young voices rang out confidently, their eyes shone, as only the eyes of a still youthful, vital, unspoiled race can shine. Was it, I tried to remember, the group that allies itself to the Russian, or to the modern French, school? It did not matter: their interest for me lay not in their aims, but in the breathlessness of their pursuit of them.
The place become suddenly full, flooded from the crowd emerging from the National Theatre across the road. They had actually been listening to Marlow's Edward the Second" given in their own express sive language, with its sharp, clear vowels, and explosive accumulated consonants. Within a few days they would be able to soe the Legend of Joseph, Shaw, Wilde, their own Smetana. Also they were reading translations from most of the European literatures, be and ardently, learning their languages as well. This in the fourth year of the Republic.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.