e woods are full
of tame deer, which run perfectly free over the whole Prater. I saw
several in one of the lawns lying down in the grass, with a number of
children playing around or sitting beside them. It is delightful to walk
there in the cool of the evening, when the paths are crowded and
everybody is enjoying the release from the dusty city. It is this free
social life which renders Vienna so attractive to foreigners and draws
yearly thousands of visitors from all parts of Europe....

We spent two or three hours delightfully one evening in listening to
Strauss's band. We went about sunset to the Odeon, a new building in the
Leopoldstadt. It has a refreshment-hall nearly five hundred feet long,
with a handsome fresco ceiling and glass doors opening into a
garden-walk of the same length. Both the hall and garden were filled
with tables, where the people seated themselves as they came and
conversed sociably over their coffee and wine. The orchestra was placed
in a little ornamental temple in the garden, in front of which I
stationed myself, for I was anxious to see the world's waltz-king whose
magic tones can set the heels of half Christendom in motion.

After the band had finished tuning their instruments, a middle-sized,
handsome man stept forward with long strides, with a violin in one hand
and bow in the other, and began waving the latter up and down, like a
magician summoning his spirits. As if he had waved the sound out of his
bow, the tones leaped forth from the instruments, and, guided by his eye
and hand, fell into a merry measure. The accuracy with which every
instrument performed its part was truly marvelous. He could not have
struck the measure or the harmony more certainly from the keys of his
own piano than from that large band. The sounds struggled forth so
perfect and distinct that one almost expected to see them embodied,
whirling in wild dance around him. Sometimes the air was so exquisitely
light and bounding the feet could scarcely keep on the earth; then it
sank into a mournful lament with a sobbing tremulousness, and died away
in a long-breathed sigh.

Strauss seemed to feel the music in every limb. He would wave his
fiddle-bow a while, then commence playing with desperate energy, moving
his whole body to the measure, till the sweat rolled from his brow. A
book was lying on the stand before him, but he made no use of it. He
often glanced around with a kind of half-triumphant smile at the
restle