There is no lack of places for pleasure or amusement.  Besides the numberless walks of the Glacis there are the imperial gardens, with their cool shades and flowers and fountains; the Augarten, laid out and opened to the public by the Emperor Joseph; and the Prater, the largest and most beautiful of all.  It lies on an island formed by the arms of the Danube, and is between two and three miles square.  From the circle at the end of the Praterstrasse broad carriage-ways extend through its forests of oak and silver ash and over its verdant lawns to the principal stream, which bounds it on the north.  These roads are lined with stately horse-chestnuts, whose branches unite and form a dense canopy, completely shutting out the sun.

Every afternoon the beauty and nobility of Vienna whirl through the cool groves in their gay equipages, while the sidewalks are thronged with pedestrians, and the numberless tables and seats with which every house of refreshment is surrounded are filled with merry guests.  Here on Sundays and holidays the people repair in thousands.  The 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.