s, and spread into lakes of
wondrous beauty, and poured through growing streams, until at last they
are all united just below the summer villa of his Kaiserly and Kingly
Majesty, Francis Joseph, and flow away northward, through the rest of
his game-preserve, into the Traunsee. It is an imperial playground,
and such as I would consent to hunt the chamois in, if an inscrutable
Providence had made me a kingly kaiser, or even a plain king or an
unvarnished kaiser. But, failing this, I was perfectly content to spend
a few idle days in fishing for trout and catching grayling, at such
times and places as the law of the Austrian Empire allowed.

For it must be remembered that every stream in these over-civilised
European countries belongs to somebody, by purchase or rent. And all
the fish in the stream are supposed to belong to the person who owns
or rents it. They do not know their master's voice, neither will they
follow when he calls. But they are theoretically his. To this legal
fiction the untutored American must conform. He must learn to clothe
his natural desires in the raiment of lawful sanction, and take out some
kind of a license before he follows his impulse to fish.

It was in the town of Aussee, at the junction of the two highest
branches of the Traun, that this impulse came upon me, mildly
irresistible. The full bloom of mid-July gayety in that ancient
watering-place was dampened, but not extinguished, by two days of
persistent and surprising showers. I had exhausted the possibilities of
interest in the old Gothic church, and felt all that a man should feel
in deciphering the mural tombstones of the families who were exiled for
their faith in the days of the Reformation. The throngs of merry Hebrews
from Vienna and Buda-Pesth, amazingly arrayed as mountaineers and
milk-maids, walking up and down the narrow streets under umbrellas,
had Cleopatra's charm of an infinite variety; but custom staled it. The
woodland paths, winding everywhere through the plantations of fir-trees
and provided with appropriate names on wooden labels, and benches for
rest and conversation at discreet intervals, were too moist for even the
nymphs to take delight in them. The only creatures that suffered nothing
by the rain were the two swift, limpid Trauns, racing through the woods,
like eager and unabashed lovers, to meet in the middle of the village.
They were as clear, as joyous, as musical as if the sun were shining.
The very sight of t