Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873

The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent. It is beneath his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit down. He knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs. He is sensible of every signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard him. To appear not to know is the chief business of his life. He will with the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men at different tables are trying to arrest his attention. Before I met this man my temper was mild and amiable: I believed in doing by my fellows as I would be done by. Now I am changed. I never visit the Vienna restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols, bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death. After eating a meal it requires another hour to pay for it. A nobleman, dressed de rigueur, condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough. There are two of these officials at the hotel. One in general manner resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government securities—the other a modest, charming young clergyman of the Church of England. One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry, I ventured to open a window. The dealer in government securities shut it immediately, and gave me a look which humiliated me for the day. I said I wanted, if possible, air enough to support life while eating my breakfast. He said that was against the rules of the house: the windows must not be opened. There was too much dust blowing in the street. What were a few common lives compared to the advent of dust in that dining-room?

You must live here by rule. Novelty is treason. It is the unalterable rule of life that because things have been done in a certain manner, so must they ever be done. It requires almost a revolution to have an egg boiled hard in Vienna. I said at my first meal, "Ein caffee und egg mit hard." It may be seen that I speak German with the English accent. The eggs came soft-boiled. I suppose that the nobleman who attended on my table went to the prince in disguise who governed the culinary department, and informed him of this new demand in the matter of eggs. It is presumable that the prince pronounced against me, for next morning my eggs were still soft-boiled. Then I braced myself up and said, "See here! I want mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard! You understand?" The nobleman looked at me with contempt. The eggs came about one-tenth of a degree harder than the previous morning. I resolved to gain my point. I saw how necessary it was to put more force, vigor, spirit and savagery into my culinary instructions to the nobleman. This despotism should not prevail against me. When the free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter.

I said on the third morning, "Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your kitchen?" Ja. "And hot Wasser?" Ja. "And will you put this hot Feuer under the said hot Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and keep them there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week—any length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones, brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite? I want mine eggs hard." Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked and savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair. There was some improvement in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard boiled.

The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking beer and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking. In the English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion. The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down life's stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized to remain longer in their bodies.

I am fast becoming German. I have my coffee at nine: it requires two hours to drink it. Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink a glass of beer. At twelve comes dinner. This I eat at a café table on the sidewalk, with more beer. At two I take a nap. At five I awake, drink another glass of beer, and dream. From that time until nine is occupied in getting hungry for supper. This occupies two hours. Then more beer and tobacco. Some time in the night I retire. Sometimes I am aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not. This is Viennese life. One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way. Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling America. From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes. They sit there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill. Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke. This is the only sign of life about them.

The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze forth. The one in mine is continually dropping down into the street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a "Dienstmann," does a good business in picking it up and bringing it up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip. The kreutzer is a copper coin equivalent to an English farthing. Every day here seems a sort of holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.

The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose—a most refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England. Most of the English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed. The Viennese lady is very tasteful. She is neither slipshod nor gaudy. I never beheld more dainty toilettes. Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut "by the lifts and braces."

Vienna abounds in great bath-houses. I have tested one. I wandered about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath. Some pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman. For fifty kreutzers she gave me a ticket. Then she called for Marie. Marie, a black-eyed, bright German girl, came. She went to a shelf and burdened herself with a quantity of linen. Then she signed for me to follow. I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame of mind. Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room. She spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water. I waited for the tub to fill and Marie to depart. Marie seemed in no hurry. I pondered over the possibilities involved in a German "Warm-bad." Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me! Never! At last she goes. I remove my collar. Suddenly Marie returns: it is to bring another towel. There is no lock on the door—nothing with which to defend one's self. I bathe in peace, however. On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has left. There is a small towel, and two large aprons without strings, long enough to reach from the shoulders to the knees. I study over their possible use. I conclude they are to dry the anatomy with. On subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were to be worn while I rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot water for cold.

The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare, disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms. They resemble much the editorial offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall despairingly into the arms of the sheriff. I had once occasion to visit the commission on a little matter of business. What that was I have forgotten: I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those apartments. When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the proper one. I went into closets, private apartments and intricate passages, and after making the entire round without discovering egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where I had entered. A solitary American was seated in the reading-room looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the right road out of the American commission. He said he hardly knew: this was his first visit, but he'd try. So both of us went prospecting around and opening all the doors we met, while a deaconish old gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently interested, yet offering nothing in the way of information or suggestion. I presume, however, this is the only amusement the man has in this forlorn place. I was beginning to think of descending by way of the windows when the strange American at last found a door which led into the main entry, and we both left at the same time, glad to escape.

I will do one side of the American department in the exhibition stern justice. It commences with a long picture placed there by the Pork Packers' Association of Cincinnati, descriptive of the processes which millions of American hogs are subjected to while being converted into pork. There are hogs going in long procession to be killed, and going, too, in a determined sort of way, as if they knew it was their business to be killed. Then come hogs killed, hogs scalded, hogs scraped, hogs cut up into shoulders, hams, sides, jowls; hogs salted, hogs smoked. Underneath this sketch are a number of unpainted buggy and carriage wheels; next, a pile of pick-handles; not far off, a little mound of grindstones; after the grindstones, a platoon of clothes-wringers; next, a solitary iron wheel-barrow communing with a patent fire-extinguisher; following these a crowd of green iron pumps, with sewing-machines in full force. Such is a bit of the American department.

It is the fashion here that every one should have a growl at the general slimness and slovenliness of our department. Every one gives our drooping eagle a kick. This is all wrong. We can't send our greatest wonders and triumphs to Europe. There is neither room nor opportunity in the building for showing off one of our political torchlight processions, or a vigilance-committee hanging, or a Chicago or Boston fire, or a steamboat blow-up, or a railway smash-up. Were the present chief of the commission a man of originality and talent, he might even now save the national reputation by bundling all the pumps, churns, patent clothes-washers, wheel-barrows and pick-handles out of doors, and converting one of the United States rooms into a reservation for the Modocs, and the other into a corral for buffaloes and grizzly bears. These, with a mustang poet or two from Oregon, a few Hard-Shell Democrats, a live American daily paper, with a corps of reporters trained to squeeze themselves through door-cracks and key-holes, might retrieve the national honor, if shown up realistically and artistically.

PRENTICE MULFORD.

GHOSTLY WARRIORS

So strong a resemblance exists between a battle-scene of a mediaeval Spanish poet and the culminating incidents of Lord Macaulay's Battle of the Lake Regillus, as to justify somewhat extended citations. Of the Spanish writer, Professor Longfellow says, in his note upon the extract from the Vida de San Millan given in the Poets and Poetry of Europe, "Gonzalo de Berceo, the oldest of the Castilian poets whose name has reached us, was born in 1198. He was a monk in the monastery of Saint Millan, in Calahorra, and wrote poems on sacred subjects in Castilian Alexandrines." According to the poem, the Spaniards, while combating the Moors, were overcome by "a terror of their foes," since "these were a numerous army, a little handful those."

And whilst the Christian people stood in this uncertainty,Upward toward heaven they turned their eyes and fixed their thoughts on high;And there two persons they beheld, all beautiful and bright,—Even than the pure new-fallen snow their garments were more white.They rode upon two horses more white than crystal sheen,And arms they bore such as before no mortal man had seen.Their faces were angelical, celestial forms had they,—And downward through the fields of air they urged their rapid way;They looked upon the Moorish host with fierce and angry look,And in their hands, with dire portent, their naked sabres shook.The Christian host, beholding this, straightway take heart again;They fall upon their bended knees, all resting on the plain,And each one with his clenched fist to smite his breast begins,And promises to God on high he will forsake his sins.And when the heavenly knights drew near unto the battle-ground,They dashed among the Moors and dealt unerring blows around;Such deadly havoc there they made the foremost ranks among,A panic terror spread unto the hindmost of the throng.Together with these two good knights, the champions of the sky,The Christians rallied and began to smite full sore and high.Down went the misbelievers; fast sped the bloody fight;Some ghastly and dismembered lay, and some half-dead with fright:Full sorely they repented that to the field they came,For they saw that from the battle they should retreat with shame.Now he that bore the crosier, and the papal crown had on,Was the glorified Apostle, the brother of Saint John;And he that held the crucifix, and wore the monkish hood,Was the holy San Millan of Cogolla's neighborhood.

Turn now to the Battle of the Lake Regillus. In a series of desperate hand-to-hand conflicts the Romans have on the whole been worsted by the allied Thirty Cities, armed to reinstate the Tarquins upon their lost throne. Their most vaunted champion, Herminius—"who kept the bridge so well"—has been slain, and his war-horse, black Auster, has barely been rescued by the dictator Aulus from the hands of Titus, the youngest of the Tarquins.

And Aulus the DictatorStroked Auster's raven mane;With heed he looked unto the girths,With heed unto the rein."Now bear me well, black Auster,Into yon thick array;And thou and I will have revengeFor thy good lord this day."So spake he; and was bucklingTighter black Auster's band,When he was aware of a princely pairThat rode at his right hand.So like they were, no mortalMight one from other know:White as snow their armor was:Their steeds were white as snow.Never on earthly anvilDid such rare armor gleam;And never did such gallant steedsDrink of an earthly stream.So answered those strange horsemen,And each couched low his spear;And forthwith all the ranks of RomeWere bold and of good cheer:And on the thirty armiesCame wonder and affright,And Ardea wavered on the left,And Cora on the right."Rome to the charge!" cried Aulus;"The foe begins to yield!Charge for the hearth of Vesta!Charge for the Golden Shield!Let no man stop to plunder,But slay, and slay, and slay;The gods who live for everAre on our side to-day."Then the fierce trumpet-flourishFrom earth to heaven arose;The kites know well the long stern swellThat bids the Romans close.And fliers and pursuersWere mingled in a mass:And far away the battleWent roaring through the pass.

The scene of the following stanza is at Rome, where the watchers at the gates have learned from the Great Twin Brethren the issue of the day:

And all the people trembled,And pale grew every cheek;And Sergius, the High Pontiff,Alone found voice to speak:"The gods who live for everHave fought for Rome to-day!These be the Great Twin BrethrenTo whom the Dorians pray!"

Of course, we are not to be understood as intimating that Macaulay was consciously or otherwise guilty of a plagiarism. Indeed, he was at the pains, in his preface to the poem in question, to point out how certain of its features were designedly taken, and others might fairly be conceived to have been taken, from ballads of an age long before Livy, whom he cites in the matter of the Great Twin Brethren. He has even detailed a circumstance, in reference to the legendary appearance of the divine warriors, curiously relevant to the resemblance just pointed out. "In modern times," he wrote, "a very similar story actually found credence among a people much more civilized than the Romans of the fifth century before Christ. A chaplain of Cortez, writing about thirty years after the conquest of Mexico,…had the face to assert that, in an engagement against the Indians, Saint James had appeared on a gray horse at the head of the Castilian adventurers. Many of those adventurers were living when this lie was printed. One of them, honest Bernal Diaz, wrote an account of the expedition.... He says that he was in the battle, and that he saw a gray horse with a man on his back, but that the man was, to his thinking, Francesco de Morla, and not the ever-blessed apostle Saint James. 'Nevertheless,' Bernal adds, 'it may be that the person on the gray horse was the glorious apostle Saint James, and that I, sinner that I am, was unworthy to see him.'" Other striking instances of identity between classical, Castilian and Saxon legends are detailed by Lord Macaulay in the learned and interesting general preface to his Lays of Ancient Rome. But the reappearance of this particular story in such remote times and places, and with such marked similarities and variations, would entitle it to a place among the indestructible popular legends collated by Mr. Baring-Gould in his Curious Myths of the Middle Ages.

A WARNING TO LOVERS

"Metildy, you are the most good-for-nothin', triflin', owdacious, contrary piece that ever lived."

"Oh, ma!" sobbed Matilda, "I couldn' help myself—'deed I couldn'."

"Couldn' help yourself? That's a pretty way to talk! Ain't he a nice young man?"

"Yes'm."

"Got money?"

"Yes'm."

"And good kinfolks?"

"Yes'm."

"And loves you to destrackshun?"

"Yes'm."

"Well, in the name o' common sense, what did you send him home for?"

"Well, ma, if I must tell the truth, I must, I s'pose, though I'd ruther die. You see, ma, when he fetcht his cheer clost to mine, and ketcht holt of my hand, and squez it, and dropt on his knees, then it was that his eyes rolled and he began breathin' hard, and his gallowses kept a creakin and a creakin', I till I thought in my soul somethin' terrible was the matter with his in'ards, his vitals; and that flustered and skeered me so that I bust out a-cryin'. Seein' me do that, he creaked worse'n ever, and that made me cry harder; and the harder I cried the harder he creaked, till all of a sudden it came to me that it wasn't nothin' but his gallowses; and then I bust out a laughin' fit to kill myself, right in his face. And then he jumpt up and run out of the house mad as fire; and he ain't comin' back no more. Boo-hoo, ahoo, boo-hoo!"

"Metildy," said the old woman sternly, "stop sniv'lin'. You've made an everlastin' fool of yourself, but your cake ain't all dough yet. It all comes of them no 'count, fashionable sto' gallowses—' 'spenders' I believe they calls 'em. Never mind, honey! I'll send for Johnny, tell him how it happened, 'pologize to him, and knit him a real nice pair of yarn gallowses, jest like your pa's; and they never do creak."

"Yes, ma," said Matilda, brightening up; "but let me knit 'em."

"So you shall, honey: he'll vally them a heap more than if I knit 'em. Cheer up, Tildy: it'll all be right—you mind if it won't."

Sure enough, it proved to be all right. Tildy and Johnny were married, and Johnny's gallowses never creaked any more.

NOTES

Milton, in his famous description of the woman Delilah, sailing like a stately ship of Tarsus "with all her bravery on, and tackle trim," is particular to note "an amber scent of odorous perfume, her harbinger." Perfume as an adjunct of feminine dress has been celebrated from the days of the earliest poet, and probably will be to the latest; but it was reserved for the modern toilet to project a regular theory of harmony between odors and colors—a theory which might never have been dreamed of in the studio of the painter, but is not unworthy of the boudoir of the belle. It is the young Englishwomen at Vienna who, if we may believe Eugène Chapus, have taken the initiative in this new refinement of coquetry, which employs not only a greater variety and quantity of perfume than in previous years, but employs it according to a certain scientific system. At balls, perfumes are especially de rigueur, and it is in her ball-dress that Araminta aims to establish a species of relation between the nature of the perfume she carries and the general character of the toilette she wears. That is to say, gravely proceeds Monsieur Chapus, if pink predominates in the stuff of her gown, the proper perfume will be essence of roses; if light yellow, it will be Portugal water; if the color be réséda (which has such a run at present for ladies' costumes), the chosen perfume will be an essence of mignonette; and so on with the other flowers corresponding to the shades commonly used in fresh ball-toilettes. Undoubtedly to a Rimmel the relation between different odors and different styles of personal beauty or personal traits would be as obvious as is this newly-discovered harmony between perfume and costume; but we fear that the new fashion is due to coquettish art rather than aesthetic taste, and that, like many another whim of the drawing-room, it will die out before the science is fairly established.

The enfant terrible plays an important rôle in literature as in society during these modern days, and although a little of him goes a good way, yet it must be owned that his sayings are sometimes spicy.

A grandfather was holding Master Tom, a youth of five, on his knees, when the youngster suddenly asked him why his hair was white. "Oh," says grandpapa, "that's because I'm so old. Why, don't you know that I was in the ark?"

"In the ark?" cries Tommy: "why you aren't Noah, are you, grandpapa?"

"Oh no, I'm not Noah."

"Ah, then you're Shem."

"No, not Shem, either."

"Oh, then I suppose you're Japhet."

"No, you haven't guessed right: I'm not Japhet."

"Well, then, grandpapa," said the child, driven to the extremity of his biblical knowledge, "you must be one of the beasts."

Not less critical was the comment of a lad who was taken to church one Sunday for the first time.

"You see, Augustus," said his fond mamma, anxious to impress his tender mind at such a moment with lasting remembrances, "how many people come here to pray to God?"

"Yes, but not so many as go to the circus," says the practical lad.

Quite natural, also, was the reply of a little lady who was found crying by her mother because one of her companions had given her a slap.

"Well, I hope you paid her back?" cried the angry mother, her indignation getting the better of her judgment.

"Oh yes, I paid her back before-hand!"

Another little girl, after attending the funeral of one of her schoolmates, which ceremony had been conducted at the school, was giving an animated account of the exercises on her return home.

"And I suppose you were all sobbing as if your hearts would break, poor things!" says papa.

"Oh no," replies the child: "only the front row cried."

It was one of the features of the shah-mania that British journalism was overrun and surfeited with Persian topics, Persian allusions and fragments of the Persian language and literature. Every pedant of the press displayed an unexpected and astonishing acquaintance with Persian history, Persian geography, Persian manners and customs. Desperate cramming was done to get up Persian quotations for leading articles, or at least a saying or two from Hafiz or Saadi of the sort commonly found at the end of a lexicon or in some popular book of maxims. Ludicrous disputes arose between morning papers as to the comparative profundity of each other's researches into Persian lore; but the climax was capped, we think, by one London journal, which politely offered advice to Nasr-ed-Dîn about his conduct and his reading. "Should Nasr-ed-Dîn be impressed by English flattery," said this editor gravely, "with an exaggerated sense of his own importance, His Majesty, as a corrective, may recall to mind the Persian fable of 'Ushter wa Dirâz-kush,' from the 'Baharistân' of Jaumy." In ordinary times an explanation might be vouchsafed of what the said fable is, but none was given in the present instance, it being taken for granted, during the shah's visit, that the Baharistân of Jaumy was as familiar to the average Englishman as Mother Goose. Upon the whole, our country has not been wholly unfortunate in not seeing the shah. Horace's famous "Persicos odi, puer, apparatus," has a very close application in the "Persian stuff" with which British journalism has lately been flooded.

How various his employments whom the worldCalls idle!

says Cowper. To describe the holiday amusement provided for the shah in England as having been a grand "variety entertainment" would feebly represent the mixture actually furnished him. One day, for example (a Monday), His Majesty began by reviewing the Fire Brigade; and then Captain Shaw was presented to the shah—likewise Colonel Hogg; and then, according to the Morning Advertiser, "Joe Goss, Ned Donelly, Alex. Lawson, and young Horn had the honor of appearing and boxing before the shah and a small company, at which His Majesty seemed highly delighted;" and next came deputations successively from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge, the Bible Society, the Church Missionary Society, and the Evangelical Alliance; then a deputation from the Mohammedans residing in London was presented, and Sir Moses Montefiore had a private interview with His Majesty; and finally, to wind up the day's programme, the shah, attended by many princes and princesses, and an audience of 34,000 people, witnessed a performance at the Crystal Palace expressly selected to suit his taste—namely, gymnastic feats by Germans and Japanese, followed by "Signor Romah" on the trapeze. All this was done before dinner; and the curious combination of piety and pugilism, missionaries and acrobats, may be supposed to have had the effect of duly "impressing" the illustrious guest.