The Nameless Castle

To a man who hasearned such titles as "The Shakespeare of Hungary" and "TheGlory of Hungarian Literature"; who published in fifty years threehundred and fifty novels, dramas, and miscellaneous works, not to mentioninnumerable articles for the press that owes its freedom chiefly to him, itseems incredible that there was ever a time of indecision as to what careerhe was best fitted to follow. The idle life of the nobility into which MaurusJókay was born in 1825 had no attractions for a strongly intellectual boy,fired with zeal and energy that carried him easily to the head of each classin school and college; nor did he feel any attraction for the prosaicpractice of law, his father's profession, to which Austria's despotism drovemany a nobleman in those wretched days for Hungary. It was Pétofi, the poet,who was his dearest friend during the student-life at Pápa; idealism everattracted him, and, by natural gravitation toward the finest minds, he chosethe friendship of young men who quickly rose into eminence during the days ofrevolution and invasion that tried men's souls.