The Argosy — page 290: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Among the fiungarians. 273 Everyone seized the wrong person’s baggage, and tried to make off with it; the hostess welcomed the guests already arrived, and intro- duced us all by our wrong names ; the children rushed into the vine- press, and had to be brought back ; everybody spoke at the same time. And above all the noise, hurry, and confusion, were heard the wildly exciting strains of the gipsy band. At last, after frantically rushing out of a ladies’ bedroom, where IL found myself inconsequence of thoughtlessly following my hostess, and being subsequently rescued from the kitchen by little Gyula, who constituted himself my protector, | found myself in the sleeping- room designed for my use. It was, perhaps, rather smaller than bedrooms usually are, being exactly large enough to hold a sofa-bed and a washstand; but I had long ago been warned to expect no comfort at all during the vintage, as the house was several sizes too small for all who proposed to inhabit it. Thus I was agreeably sur- prised to find that I was to have a room to myself, though hardly larger than a good-sized packing-case. The chief apartment of the house, occupying the centre of it, and being entered immediately from the front steps, was that devoted to the wine-press. It was like a huge barn, the floor of trodden and beaten earth, and the door large and wide, to facilitate the entrance of immense baskets of grapes, and to give ingress to the only hght which the place afforded. Here, when the eye grew accustomed to the gloom, I discovered dark forms moving to and fro. On two sides were large vessels, something like enormous barrels, or small wooden pulpits, and in each of these a man appeared to be dancing. Around him were others, who, from time to time, flung the grapes beneath the dancer’s feet, or arranged mysterious taps and screws, which were to aid the flowing of the grape-juice into the great vats in the cellar below. I looked into the barrels, and saw that the dancers, or treaders, were stamping on the skins and stems of the grapes, piled at least a foot in thickness, and drained of their juice by the process, the fruit having been thrown in promiscuously as it was picked—only that, in one case, the grapes were white, and in the other purple. The overseer, a sturdy Wallachian, with a fierce black moustache and ringlets, looked narrowly at the little streams of juice that ran from the taps, and when, at last, those from one barrel dwindled, and then came drop by drop and stopped, the treader swung himself to the ground, and, with shovels and wooden vessels, proceeded to empty it of the pressed grape-skins and stalks, and re-fill it with fresh fruit. And here I must say my romantic delusions as to the “ treading of the wine-press,” and all the patriarchal institutions which surround it, vanished at once and for ever. I had had dim ideas of snowy garments dyed purple with the juice of the grape, and the delicate feet of girls treading the luscious fruit under the VOL. XXXII. ps GOnlGaooks (CO)