ndeed to what it is at present; for an unbounded
gaiety and an air of reckless festivity was apparent then all the time to
everybody everywhere. Under it all lurked and rankled abuses, municipal,
social, and political, such as would in 1893 be deemed incredible if not
unnatural (as may be read in a clever novel called _Die schone
Wienerinn_), but on the surface all was brilliant foam and sunshine and
laughing sirens. What new thing Strauss would play in the evening was
the great event of the day. I saw and heard the great Johann
Strauss--this was the grandfather--and in after years his son, and the
_schone Edie_ his grandson. Everywhere one heard music, and the Prater
was a gay and festive paradise indeed. There was no business; the town
lived on the Austrian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Russian, and other nobility,
who in those days were extravagant and ostentatious to a degree now
undreamed of, and on strangers. As for free and easy licentiousness,
Paris was a trifle to it, and the police had strict orders to encourage
everything of the kind; the result being that the seventh commandment in
all its phases was treated like pie-crust, as a thing made to be broken,
the oftener the better. Even on our first arriving at our hotel, our
good-natured landlord, moved by the principle that it was not good for a
young man to be alone, informed us that if we wished to have damsels in
our rooms no objection would be interposed. "Why not?" he said; "this is
not a church"; the obvious inference being that to a Viennese every place
not a church must necessarily be a temple to Venus. And every Wiener,
when spoken to, roared with laughter; and there were minstrels in the
streets, and musicians in every dining-place and cafe, and great ringing
of bells in chimes, and 'twas merry in hall when beards wagged all, and
"the world went very well in those days." Vienna is a far finer town
now, but it is a Quaker meeting-house compared to what it was for gaiety
forty years ago.

This change of life and manners has spread, and will continue to spread,
all over the world. In feudal times the people were kept quiet by means
of holidays, carnivals, processions, fairs, fairy-tales, treats, and
indulgences; even the common childish instinct for gay dress and
picturesqueness of appearance was encouraged, and at high tides everybody
was fed and given to drink: so that if the poor toiled and fasted and
prayed, it might be for months, they had their j