I said on the third morning, “Haben Sie ein hot Feuer in your kitchen?” Ja.  “And hot Wasser?” Ja.  “And will you put this hot Feuer under the said hot Wasser, and in that hot Wasser put the eggs and keep them there zehn Minuten, zwanzig Minuten, or a day or a week—­any length of time, so that they are only boiled hard, just like stones, brickbats, rocks, boulders or the gray granite crest of Yosemite?  I want mine eggs hard.”  Then I ground my teeth and looked wicked and savage, and squirmed viciously in my chair.  There was some improvement in the eggs that morning, but they were not hard boiled.

The Viennese spend most of their time in the open air, drinking beer and coffee, reading light newspapers, eating and smoking.  In the English and American sense they have neither politics nor religion.  The government and the Church provide these articles, leaving the people little to do save enjoy themselves, float lazily down life’s stream, and die when their souls become too spiritualized to remain longer in their bodies.

I am fast becoming German.  I have my coffee at nine:  it requires two hours to drink it.  Then I dream a little, smoke a cigar and drink a glass of beer.  At twelve comes dinner.  This I eat at a cafe table on the sidewalk, with more beer.  At two I take a nap.  At five I awake, drink another glass of beer, and dream.  From that time until nine is occupied in getting hungry for supper.  This occupies two hours.  Then more beer and tobacco.  Some time in the night I retire.  Sometimes I am aware of the operation of disrobing, sometimes not.  This is Viennese life.  One day merges into another in a vague, misty sort of way.  Time is not checked off into short, sharp divisions as in busy, bustling America.  From the windows opposite mine, on the other side of the street, protrude Germans with long pipes.  They sit there hour after hour, those pipes hanging down a foot below the window-sill.  Occasionally they emit a puff of smoke.  This is the only sign of life about them.

The window-sills are furnished with cushions to lean on when you gaze forth.  The one in mine is continually dropping down into the street below, and a man in a brass-mounted cap, who calls himself a “Dienstmann,” does a good business in picking it up and bringing it up stairs at ten kreutzers a trip.  The kreutzer is a copper coin equivalent to an English farthing.  Every day here seems a sort of holiday, and in this respect Sunday stands pre-eminent.

The ladies, as a rule, are fine-looking, shapely, well-dressed and particular as to the fit of their gaiters and hose—­a most refreshing sight to one for a year accustomed to the general dowdiness which in this respect prevails in England.  Most of the English girls seem to have no idea that their feet should be dressed.  The Viennese lady is very tasteful.  She is neither slipshod nor gaudy.  I never beheld more dainty toilettes.  Everything about them, as a sailor would say, is cut “by the lifts and braces.”