'I think it is what is wanted,' she said. 'A little peasant child does not need to be able to talk of the corolla and the spathe, but he does want to recognise at a glance the flower that will give him healing and the berries that will give him death. His sister does not in the least require to know why a kettle boils, but she does need to know when a warm bath will be good for a sick baby or when hurtful. We want a new generation to be helpful, to have eyes, and to know the beauty of silence. I do not mind much whether my children read or not. The labourer that reads turns Socialist, because his brain cannot digest the hard mass of wonderful facts he encounters. But I believe every one of my little peasants, being wrecked like Crusoe, would prove as handy as he.'
She was fond of her scholars and proud of them, and they were never afraid of her. They knew well it was the great lady who filled all their sacks the night of Santa Claus--even those of the naughty children, because, as she said, childhood was so short that she thought it cruel to give it any disappointments.
The walk to the schoolhouse lay through the woods to the south of the castle; woods of larch and beech and walnut and the graceful Siberian pine, with deep mosses and thick fern-brakes beneath them, and ever and again a watercourse tumbling through their greenery to fall into the Szalrassee below.
'I always fancy I can hear here the echo of the great Krimler torrents,' she said to him as they passed through the trees. 'No doubt it _is_ fancy, and the sound is only from our own falls. But the peasants' tradition is, you may know, that our lake is the water of the Krimler come to us underground from the Pinzgau. Do you know our Sahara of the North? It is monotonous and barren enough, and yet with its vast solitudes of marsh and stones, its flocks of wild fowl, its reedy wastes, its countless streams, it is grand in its own way. And then in the heart of it there are the thunder and the boiling fury of Krimml! You will smile because I am an enthusiast for my country, you who have seen Orinoco and Chimborazo; but even you will own that the old Duchy of Austria, the old Archbishopric of Salzburg, the old Countship of Tirol, have some beauty and glory in them. Here is the schoolhouse. Now you shall see what I think needful for the peasant of the future. Perhaps you will condemn me as a true Austrian: that is, as a Reactionist.'