The text describes various Polish souvenirs located in the vicinity of Kharkiv, including houses once owned by Prof. Walicki and Mickiewicz, as well as the former villa of the Siemiradzki family (Source: Tygodnik Illustrowany, Warsaw 1877, Series 3, T:4, pp. 337-338, 354 after: University of Lodz Digital Library).

A modernised reading of the text.

Our souvenirs in Kharkiv
Crumbs of recent impressions

After a 20-year absence, coincidence led me to Kharkiv for a few days. Travelling a dozen or so miles from there by rail, I could not resist the temptation and, from the steppe line that runs towards the Meotian sea, I deviated, perhaps for 24 hours, to the place with which my memories of my youth are connected.

It was there where I began my university studies, where I saw the priesthood of science resting in the hands of people of our language, who knew how to conduct it with dignity and, in that remote, for those times, university, were true guides of youth.

Kharkiv is for me a treasury of memories, to which I wanted to pay tribute, and at the same time I thought that I might yet meet at least some remnants of the old life, at least some remnants of the people of the past. Unfortunately, the past never returns!...

Kharkiv as before has a numerous colony, which migrated from under our sky. However, this colony exists in dispersion; old life is not to be found here in vain. I approached, and as I looked around, as I listened to the sad tale of the fate of the people of yesteryear, Kharkiv became for me a great cemetery of memories, and with a tear of sadness I greeted this graveyard of the past. All the best from the former colony of our countrymen either dispersed around the world or rested in their graves... To these, indeed, the best part was given.

In the midst of this great thinning out, carried out by the hand of time, there remains only one, the only one of the people of bygone days, left as if to testify, who were the former workers of the Lord's vineyard

For what kind of people did this distant steppe town not have within its walls for a longer or shorter period of time? From Severyn Potocki - the first curator and, one might say, founder of the Kharkiv university - to Tadeusz Czacki, who, delegated there on matters of science, stayed there for a whole year - Kharkiv was the seat of and benefited from the knowledge of Ignacy Danilovich, Gregory Ilreozyna, Jozef Korzeniowski, Aleksander Mickiewicz (Adam's brother), Alfons Walicki, Antoni Stanislawski, Norbert Jurgiewicz and many other of our countrymen, known for their learning, work and love for the youth they led....

The list of those eminent men in our society, who stayed there permanently or were temporary guests, is much larger than the number of names mentioned here; we would also include Adam Mickiewicz, who stayed in Kharkiv for some time, in the autumn of 1825. We would find there also Adam Mickiewicz, who stayed in Kharkiv for some time, in the autumn of 1825, under the hospitable roof of Ignacy Danilovich, whom he knew from Vilnius and who was the dean of the legal department of the Kharkiv university when Adam travelled from Crimea to Moscow; we would find other names, numerous and dear to the country, but we are not writing the history of our colony beyond the Vorskla. Another pen, as far as we know, meticulously notes all the facts relating to this history, which will show posterity that here was not idle, generously throwing the seeds of science, stewarding the treasures of learning and grafting many a good thought.

Much of this work has been in vain, many of the seeds have been blown away by the hurricane, many a handful has fallen on barren land and the city of the expected harvest, the meadow of persistent work has turned green with weeds. There were, however, sowings, and many, which responded to the expectations of God's ploughmen. Many times it happened there, according to the words of the Scriptures, and for reasons beyond the understanding of human wisdom, that the wheat produced tares. The meadows, more strewn with the toil of work, warmed by the radiance of family fires, bore bitter fruit, while the foundations grew luxuriant with blossom...
"Spiritus flat, ubi vult..."

Constrained by circumstances and time, I walked around the city without resting, in order to see once again, during my momentary stay, all those places with which I have precious memories attached to them.

It was from the church that I began my walk through this graveyard of memories. It was a weekday and the hour was very early. It was quiet and empty in the small, tidy church, which does not show the destructive hand of time; it was clear that the local parishioners do not forget this precious asylum of sad and weary pilgrims of life.

On the day of my visit, however, there was hardly anyone in the church. Two or three women leaning over the threshold, a few children, some miserable people, the kindest participants in God's kingdom for Christ, made up the entire audience of the several masses celebrated daily by the local priests with exemplary order. The temple is larger today than it used to be, the fruit, after all, of an earlier era.

In vain, however, my eye searched in this church for the picture of Christ once placed there, painted by our illustrious novelist Józef Korzeniowski. This painting was in one of the side altars; it's not there now, it's been replaced by another; when - I couldn't find out. Apparently, as I was told, there is no trace of Korzeniowski even in the church books. Inventories of church property, mentioning this painting, previously, a dozen years ago, suddenly disappeared: they guess that someone from the family of the famous writer took this precious memento from Kharkiv.

From the shrine I directed my steps to the university walls. The time was - it was a holiday. The vestibules and academic halls were not swarming with young people. The building was open, but only the heavy footsteps of the doorkeeper echoed against the vaults of the corridors and empty arcades. A bundle of keys, the emblem of the office, rang at his belt. I greeted the old man and asked if he had been standing guard at the academic door for a long time.
- Oh a long time, a very long time, it's been fourteen years now...
- So you don't remember professors: Walicki, Mickiewicz, Stanislavski? - I asked the doorkeeper.
- Nothing, I don't remember the first two; the last one was still with me... just here, in this auditorium, he usually read the lessons.

The doorkeeper, who had been watching over the building for fourteen years, was already too contemporary for me, so I stopped bothering him with questions and, alone, accompanied only by shadows of the past, I ran through the halls of the school.

Long disappeared from this corner of science, the figures of the masters moved among the chambers so familiar to me. Alphonse Walicki, the dean of the historical-philological department, walked along, his face serene, his forehead lofty, from which shone a halo of knowledge.

A silent, self-centred old man walked by, wearing a long coat that remembered the era of the Krzemieniec secondary school, with a cap that must have been worn in 'Soplicowo' in the days of Mr Thaddeus - this was Aleksander Mickiewicz, professor of Roman law. If he were to take off his classic cap, we would see a beautiful profile, reminiscent of the features of his immortal brother, we would see a gaze that was once full of fire, then already dim, gazing into the depths of his own spirit, seemingly indifferent to everything that surrounded him.

This quiet, self-contained figure would occasionally, albeit very rarely, hurl a wit that became a terror to his work colleagues at university councils. Behind these shadows of the dead, my memories evoked shadows of masters who were alive but working elsewhere and had not been seen for many years. Thus further rows of sightings of the past flashed before my memory.

A pale, sad face, with a benevolent smile and a book of classics in his hand - that's Jurgiewicz, professor of ancient philology; while that haughty, noble figure, full of the charm of eternal youth, which supposedly has not yet left him, is A. Stanislavski, known to the wider circles of our common people for his excellent translation of Dante - professor and dean of the Faculty of Law...

The clanking of the doorkeeper's keys, which I knew was about to leave the university chambers, reminded me that time was running out and it was time to go further among this graveyard of memories.

So I walked down the street, not really realising where I was going, and after a while, as if by instinct, I found myself at the gate of a house.

Having raised my head, I wanted to go on, but having considered it, I remained at this gate, which looked grand and dignified, although it was an old gate that had once led to the home of Aleksander Mickiewicz. Outside the rejuvenated gate, deep in the courtyard Far from the country, almost forgotten, one might say, in that day from his own, this husband full of talent under the roof of that edifice became one of the creators of the Polish novel... A whole series of comedies and dramas: "Old Mash", "Pani kasztelanowa", "Doctor of Medicine", "Postal Station in Julczy", "Window on the First Floor", "Andrew Patery" and many others - saw the light of day within the walls of that school edifice. It was there that 'Spekulant' and 'Collocation' were written, novels that marked the beginning of a new era in our moral novel writing. We can therefore call this house one of the cradles of the Polish novel, and place it, we dare say, alongside the manor houses of Omelno and Gródek, where our master of masters, great in talent, work and civic service, J. I. Kraszewski, created his first works. If these modest institutions in Volhynia, which looked back on the first works of Kraszewski, are valuable to the nation's memory, then the building in Kharkiv, once a school, now condemned to premature decay through neglect, should also be of great interest to us.

The era of J. Korzeniowski's stay in Kharkiv is too long ago for me, as I became acquainted with this distant town of Vyborg ten years after the author of "The Carpathian Highlanders" left it; however, the tradition of this stay was still quite alive there... The memory, which was left behind by a husband full of talent, both there and at home, was unfortunately not very friendly. What others had been forgiven, he had not been forgiven; and these supposedly small splinters of relations with those around him, placed in a rather sensitive manner, which probably hurt this soul of artistic dispositions many times, gave him the idea to write " Collocations".The petty gentry, in constant quarrels over trifles, vegetating somewhere in the Volhynian hamlet, among the fertile fields of Stary Konstantinovy, whose quarrels, coalitions and linguistic fencing were so powerfully depicted in J. Korzeniowski's art. Korzeniowski, if this is not a faithful picture of storms in a teacup, which many times shook the relations of the colonies of our compatriots, thrown far from their family nests?... The chamber that saw the birth of "The Colloquy", "The Speculator", where Korzeniowski's exquisite types of comedy were written and Shakespeare was dressed in the robes of Polish speech, this chamber is today the repository of the old rupees of an Israeli family. A cradle of masterpieces of art, profaned, soiled, it makes a rather sad impression on a passer-by... However, I did not stay there long; the curious gaze of the present hosts of the flat, unable to understand what attraction the neglected, shabby, cobweb-covered room might have for me, soon drove me out of it. Leaving, I reassured the hosts of this once shrine to art that this was probably the last visit that would disturb their peace. There are fewer and fewer worshippers of relics of days gone by in our country.