It follows that the traveler who goes to the East to study the manners and customs of its people will get only an imperfect and outside view if he makes himself comfortable in one of the hybrid European hotels we have described, instead of braving the picturesque discomforts of the Oriental hotel or khan, which he will find endurable by taking a few preliminary precautions easily suggested to him on the spot.

EDWIN DE LEON.

OUR MONTHLY GOSSIP.

THE CALIFORNIAN AT VIENNA.

I am in bonds and fetters through not understanding the German tongue.  It is a weary torture to be a stupid, uncomprehended foreigner.  I am lost in a linguistic swamp.  It is necessary to employ one man to talk to another.  The commisionnaire does not understand more than half I say.  What might he not be interpreting to the other fellow?  The most trivial want costs me a world of anxiety and trouble.  I desired some blotting-paper.  I went to a little stationery shop.  I said, “Paper! paper! fuer die blot, you know.  Ich bin Englisher—­er:  ink no dry; what you call um?  Vas? vas?  Hang it!” They took down all sorts of paper—­letter-paper, wrapping-paper, foolscap, foreign post.  I tried to make my want known by signs.  I made myself simply ridiculous.  The shopkeeper stared at me in perplexity, disgust and despair.  Then he discussed the matter with his wife.  I fretted, perspiring vigorously.  I went away.  I went to a commissionnaire at my hotel.  It required five minutes to explain the matter to him.  He discussed the matter with the portier.  The portier is quite buried under gold lace and brass buttons.  The commissionnaire returns to me.  He thinks he knows what I require, but is not quite certain.  All this trouble for a bit of blotting-paper!  It is so with everything.  Every little matter of every-day life, which at home to think of and do are almost identical, here costs so much time, labor and anxiety!  My strength is all gone when I have purchased a paper of pins and a bottle of ink.  Breakfast and dinner task me to the utmost.  The slightest deviation from established custom seems to act on the people at the restaurant like a wrong figure in a table of logarithms.  It required three days to convince a stunted boy in a long-tailed coat that I did not wish beer for dinner.  He would bring beer.  I would say, “I don’t want beer!  I want my—­some dinner.”  He would depart and take counsel with the head-waiter, and I would feel as if I had been doing something for which I ought to be corrected.  The latter functionary approaches and exclaims with domineering voice, “Vat you vants?” I reply with meekness, “Dinner, sir, if you please.”  He brings me an elegantly bound book containing the bill of fare.  But it is in German:  I look at it knowingly:  Sanscrit would be quite as intelligible.  I put my finger on a word which I suppose means soup.  I look up meekly at the functionary.  He glowers contemptuously