Democratic Sentinel, Volume 18, Number 19, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1894 — LIKE MARK TWAIN'S NAG. [ARTICLE]

LIKE MARK TWAIN'S NAG.

Servla's Chief Poet Tells of ■ Horse That Could Outrace a Rain-Storm. Nikola Tesla is known to Americans as one of the greatest scientists this age of electricity has produced. But he has stopped long enough in his marvelous investigations of alternating currents to write a sympathetic study of the chief Servian poet of this generation, Zmai lovan lovanovich, for the Century. This writer, so strongly intrenched in the affections of all Servians, was born in Novi Sad (Neusatz), a city at the southern border of Hungary, on November 24, 1888. He comes from an old and noble family,which is related to the Servian royal house. In his earliest childhood he showed a great desire to learn by heart the Servian national songs which were recited to him, and even as a child he began to compose poems. His father, who was a highly cultivated and wealthy gentleman, gave him hfs first education in his native city. After this he went to Budapest, Prague, and Vienna, and in these cities he finished his studies in law. This was the wish of his father, but his own inclinations prompted him to take up the study of medicine. He then returned to his native city, where a prominent official position was offered him, which he accepted, but so strong were his poetical instincts that a year later he abandoned the post to devote himself entirely to literary work.

Zmai has founded several journals which have attained a great national prestige and popularity. Since 1870 he has pursued his profession as a physician, and now lives, honored and beloved, in Belgrade. Tesla has given a literal translation of some of Zmai’s shorter poems, and Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson has put them into metrical form in English. One of these will remind all readers of Mark Twain’s story of the fast horse, as told to him by Oudinot, of the Sandwich Islands, and recorded in The Galaxy for April, 1871. In that veracious narrative it is related that, during a terrible storm, the horse kept in advance of the rain so that not a single drop fell on the driver, but the dog was swimming behind the wagon all the way. As told by Zmai and versified by Mr. Johnson, a gipsy is praising his horse: And now about speed. “Is he fast I should say 1 Just listen—l’ll tell One equinox day, Coming home from Erdout in the usual way, A terrible storm overtook us. ’Twas plain There was nothing to do but to run for it. Rain, Like the blackness of night, gave us chase. But that nag, Though he’d had a hard day, didn’t tremble or sag. Then the lightning would flash, And the thunder would crash With a terrible din. They were eager to catch him; but he would just neigh, Squint back to make sure, and then gallop away. Well, this made the storm the more furious yet, And we raced and we raced, but he wasn’t upset And he wouldn’t give in! At last when we got to the foot of the hill At the end of the trail, By the stream where our white gipsy castle was set, And the boys from the camp came a waving their caps, At a word he stood still. To be hugged by the girls and be praised by the chaps. We had beaten the gale, And Selim was dry as a bone—well, perhaps, Just a little bit damp on the tip of his tail.