by the Stojałowski group in Kraków. Together with Witos, Ptak financially supported the construction of the Bonifratres Hospital at Trynitarska Street in Kraków. He was inscribed on the list of benefactors of the Order of Bonifratres. When he later did not want to stay in the hospital during his illness, the monks took care of him at home due to his services to the convent. He also contributed to the construction of a brick school in Bieńczyce, the first of its kind in the poviat, and to the construction of a parish house in Raciborowice, next to the gothic fifteenth century church of St Margaret. Ptak was friends with several artists. Among them was Włodzimierz Tetmajer. The correspondence of the two was preserved. In one of his pastels, Tetmajer depicted Ptak and other peasant Błażej Czepiec. Ptak, on the other hand, made his old house available to the painter Józef Krasnowolski, who found himself together with his family in a difficult financial situation. The guests in Ptak's house, apart from Tetmajer and Krasnowolski, included Stanisław Wyspiański, Lucjan Rydel, and Wojciech Kossak. The Wedding episode In December 1900 Franciszek Ptak ran unsuccessfully to the Austrian Imperial Council. A reference to that event appeared in one of the dialogues of Stanisław Wyspiański play The Wedding (1901). According to Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, a notable figure of the Young Poland, the fictional figure of Czepiec brought to life by Wyspiański was modeled mainly after Błażej Czepiec, a peasant from the village of Bronowice, but in fact included some characteristics of both Błażej Czepiec and Franciszek Ptak. Boy-Żeleński pointed out that “Wyspiański, portraying Czepiec in several authentic situations of that wedding reception, strengthened his physiognomy with some of the features taken from another sub-Krakow peasant, Ptak. Mr. Ptak, even taller than Czepiec, a peasant of enormous strength, popular in the poviat, magnificent in his white coat, a figurehead on all “national parades” (...) also did not let others to push him around; when some kind of intellectual tried to offend his honor, Ptak said only: – Beware, sir, because I am of the Ptaks that beat in the face” (in Polish: of the Birds that beat in the face). Wyspiański invited Mr. and Mrs. Ptak to the premiere show of The Wedding in the Kraków Municipal Theatre. Author of the play was particularly interested in the opinion of Mrs. Marcjanna Ptak, whom he “valued for practical