comes in an evil hour, “ceasul rău,” or it happened, “S’a întâmplat.” Death, however does not always come unexpectedly. It may be foretold by the howling of dogs near the verandah, by the hooting of owls in the chimney, by a falling star, even by the falling of a lamp or the spilling of the oil (S. page 289).
The attitude of the Roumanian middle class towards death is often one of abject terror. Descended from peasants at most a generation or two back, the middle class represents the extreme reaction against the physical hardness of peasant life, and its members consider that effort, exertion and contact with the elemental facts of life are to be avoided whenever possible.
In sickness the patient, to whatever class he may belong, thinks that death may not be far off. The conception even of sickness is primitive. If a person is able to go about and do any work, he is well; if he is confined to bed, even with the most trivial complaint, he is ill and in danger of death. Accordingly, even when a patient’s life is in real danger, doctors will not in general tell him the truth for fear of further alarming him. I know of tubercular patients who were given no chance of recovery because they were not warned of the seriousness of their condition. In Bucharest, Kalinderu, a very rich man, administrator of the Royal Domains, died without a will, because his doctor would not tell him that his life was in danger. He had meant to leave a museum to the nation and legacies for public objects; but in the absence of a will, his nephew inherited everything, though it was eventually arranged that the nation should have the museum.
The peasant when ill does not send for a doctor, but for a “baba,” an old woman who tries to cure him by charms and incantations. The belief in the power of the “baba” to cause and cure all sorts of misfortunes, quarrels and curses is universal among the Roumanian peasants. Once I scolded my cook’s daughter severely for carelessness in
