Twenty years in Roumania

Maude Parkinson

Published by George Allen & Unwin , hardcover

PREFACE
NOW that I have set down in black and white these random impressions and recollections of a country in which I spent many of the happiest years of my life, a slight feeling of doubt assails me. Might my Roumanian friends possibly find cause for offence in the freedom which I have allowed myself ? Then I remember that they have a sense of humour, and the doubt vanishes.

If I deal frankly with some of the methods and customs of the country, it is because I hope to give English readers an insight into the character of the people, and enable them to find there, as I have found, a very great deal to love.

When, after my long absence from England, I compare our own methods and ways of thought with those which have become so familiar to me in Roumania, the Jatter do not always suffer in the comparison. Indeed, if I wrote about some of the things which have especially struck me since my return, I might arouse a good deal of resentment.
Some of the best friends I have in the world are Roumanians. The kindness and sympathy they showed me during a time of great sorrow in my life must be an enduring memory. Rather than be suspected of repaying such kindness by holding up my friends to ridicule, I would tear up these pages which I-a tyro in the art of letters-have written with so much labour, but also, I must add, with so much pleasure.

After completing my education in Germany, I spent some time very happily in Vienna with friends who were well acquainted with Roumania.
I became fascinated by their descriptions of life in a country which for me had something of the glamour of the Orient, and so, armed with letters of introduction, I proceeded to Bucarest and soon established myself as a teacher of languages. For the twenty-two following years of my life I lived in Roumania ; but for the war I should probably be there now.

My relations with my pupils, members of the bestknown families in the country, were always of the pleasantest, and as Roumanians have a natural aptitude for languages, there was no drudgery in the teaching.

Since I left the country Roumania has come through a time of terrible trial.
My heart has often been wrung by the accounts of the sufferings of my friends ; but even during the darkest days of the war I was sustained by the knowledge that they never once lost courage. They displayed a spirit as indomitable as our own, and now I rejoice that their fiery trial is over, and that the dawn of a glorious day has arrived.
MAUDE REA PARKINSON.