ooms, _cafes_, a grand
ball-room, and the gambling _salons_. Government has at length
interfered, and these last, hired by companies paying a certain sum for
the privilege of beguiling and beggaring visitors, were to be closed now
in two years, I think, or less. In front of the Kursaal a band plays
every afternoon; the colonnade and square are thronged with people
promenading or occupying the chairs placed there, eating ices, drinking
wine, and enjoying the fine music, but all perfectly quiet in manner and
plain of dress. No one was gaudily or even strikingly attired. The
Hanoverian women were the most marked for their queer head-dresses,
consisting of an enormous bow and ends of wide, black ribbon perched
upon their crowns, and giving their heads a peculiar, bat-like
appearance. And in this connection I might say that national
peculiarities in dress are seldom met with in the ordinary course of
continental travel. They still exist to some extent among the lower
classes, and are often assumed and perpetuated to attract the attention
of travellers; but ordinarily you will find people whom you meet
anywhere and everywhere to be costumed much alike. Paris fashions, with
modifications (and in America with _intensifications_), have prevailed
universally, until there are few outward dissimilarities to be observed
among the people of different nationalities. Nothing strikes the
attention of the traveller more than this universal homogeneousness; and
not in dress alone. In Bruges, under the shadow of the belfry tower,
little girls trot off to school in water-proofs, just as they do at home
with us; and at the entrance to Stirling Castle, we passed a sturdy
little boy with his hands in his pockets, whistling, "Not for Jo,"
exactly like other sturdy little boys we know at home.

But to return to Baden-Baden.

We almost fancied a sulphurous odor hung about the gambling _salons_.
Not a footfall echoed upon the softly-carpeted floors as we entered. The
most breathless silence hung over everything. In the centre, a crowd,
three in depth at least, surrounded and hid the table covered with green
cloth, before which sat the _croupier_, with a kind of little rake in
his hand. In our eyes he was the incarnation of evil, though to
unprejudiced vision he would appear simply a well-dressed--not
flashily-arrayed--gentleman, of a rather intellectual countenance, who
might have passed upon the street as a lawyer in good practice, or
possibly