ns of historical bricabrac, including the head of the
unhappy Turkish general who was strangled by his sovereign because he
failed to take Vienna in 1683. This from familiarity had no longer any
effect upon the consul, but it gave Colonel Kenton prolonged pause. "I
should have preferred a subordinate position in the sultan's army, I
believe," he said. "Why, Davis, what a museum we could have had out of
the Army of the Potomac alone, if Lincoln had been as particular as that
sultan!"

From the arsenals they went to visit the parade-ground of the garrison,
and came in time to see a manoeuvre of the troops, at which they
looked with the frank respect and reserved superiority with which our
veterans seem to regard the military of Europe. Then they walked about
and noted the principal monuments of the city, and strolled along the
promenades and looked at the handsome officers and the beautiful women.
Colonel Kenton admired the life and the gay movement everywhere; since
leaving Paris he had seen nothing so much like New York. But he did not
like their shovelling up the snow into carts everywhere and dumping all
that fine sleighing into the Danube. "By the way," said his friend,
"let's go over into Leopoldstadt, and see if we can't scare up a sleigh
for a little turn in the suburbs."

"It's getting late, isn't it?" asked the colonel.

"Not so late as it looks. You know we haven't the high American sun,
here."

Colonel Kenton was having such a good time that he felt no trouble about
his wife, sitting over her mending in the Kaiserin Elisabeth; and he
yielded joyfully, thinking how much she would like to hear about the
suburbs of Vienna: a husband will go through almost any pleasure in
order to give his wife an entertaining account of it afterwards;
besides, a bachelor companionship is confusing: it makes many things
appear right and feasible which are perhaps not so. It was not till
their driver, who had turned out of the beaten track into a wayside
drift to make room for another vehicle, attempted to regain the road by
too abrupt a movement, and the shafts of their sledge responded with a
loud crick-crack, that Colonel Kenton perceived the error into which he
had suffered himself to be led. At three miles' distance from the city,
and with the winter twilight beginning to fall, he felt the pang of a
sudden remorse. It grew sorer with every homeward step and with each
successive failure to secure a conveyance for their retu