covers of the printed page, I read the biographies of these obscure beings in their merry or secretly troubled faces, in their elastic or weary step, in the attitude shown by members of the same family toward one another, in detached, half involuntary remarks.  And, indeed, one can not understand famous men unless one has sympathized with the obscure!  From the quarrels of drunken pushcart-men to the discords of the sons of the gods there runs an invisible, yet unbroken, thread, just as the young servant-girl, who, half against her will, follows her insistent lover away from the crowd of dancers, may be an embryo Juliet, Dido, or Medea.

Two years ago, as usual, I had mingled as a pedestrian with the pleasure-seeking visitors of the kermis.  The chief difficulties of the trip had been overcome, and I found myself at the end of the Augarten with the longed-for Brigittenau lying directly before me.  Only one more difficulty remained to be overcome.  A narrow causeway running between impenetrable hedges forms the only connection between the two pleasure resorts, the joint boundary of which is indicated by a wooden trellised gate in the centre.  On ordinary days and for ordinary pedestrians this connecting passage affords more than ample space.  But on kermis-day its width, even if quadrupled, would still be too narrow for the endless crowd which, in surging forward impetuously, is jostled by those bound in the opposite direction and manages to get along only by reason of the general good nature displayed by the merry-makers.

I was drifting with the current and found myself in the centre of the causeway upon classical ground, although I was constantly obliged to stand still, turn aside, and wait.  Thus I had abundant time for observing what was going on at the sides of the road.  In order that the pleasure-seeking multitude might not lack a foretaste of the happiness in store for them, several musicians had taken up their positions on the left-hand slope of the raised causeway.  Probably fearing the intense competition, these musicians intended to garner at the propylaea the first fruits of the liberality which had here not yet spent itself.  There were a girl harpist with repulsive, staring eyes; an old invalid with a wooden leg, who, on a dreadful, evidently home-made instrument, half dulcimer, half barrel-organ, was endeavoring by means of analogy to arouse the pity of the public for his painful injury; a lame, deformed boy, forming with his violin one single, indistinguishable mass, was playing endless waltzes with all the hectic violence of his misshapen breast; and finally an old man, easily seventy years of age, in a threadbare but clean woolen overcoat, who wore a smiling, self-satisfied expression.  This old man attracted my entire attention.  He stood there bareheaded and baldheaded, his hat as a collection-box before him on the ground, after the manner of these people.  He was belaboring an old, much-cracked violin, beating time not only by raising