JOHN ARANY 219 feeling and warmth. It was on a n evening such as this, that his name first appeared upon the play-bill, that name which was to become the pride of a nation-J OHN ARANY {I8I]-I882). At length his doubts as to whether he had chosen the right career grew too strong to allow bim to remain where he was. What was he to do ? Should he return to the college at Debreczen which he had left with such high hopes, confess that he was disillusioned and beg to be adrnitted again ? N o l That was impossible. Yet what other course was open to bim. While he pondered , there arose before his imagination a picture of the littie thatcbed cottage of his parents at Nagy Szalonta, which had always seemed to him like a temple, for he had never heard there a word that was ignoble. He seemed to see his f ather, the honest, God-fearing peasant, who had taught bim when a child of three or four years, to trace his letters in the ashes, for Iack of writing paper, and had even imparted to bim the elements of Latin · grammar. How proud his father had been of his boy. Could he dare to return to his pare nts now, after causing them so much grief by becoming a strolling player ? Stay Ionger with his free-and-easy companions he would not, yet there see med to be nowhere else to go. In d eep des ponden cy he used every day to make for the outskirts of the town of Marmaros Sziget and seek for solitude in the ctense pine forests on the banks of the Iza, undaunted by the bears which roamed the forest, and plucking the bramble berries for his food. During one of th ese excur sions he fell asleep, worn out with anxiety. In a drearn he beheid his mother Jying dead. This decided bim. He fre quently acted under the impulse of d rea m s, and their inftu ence is to be seen in his poetry, e sp ecially in his ballads.
