Vienna abounds in great bath-houses.  I have tested one.  I wandered about the establishment asking every one I met for a warm bath.  Some pointed in one direction, some in another, and after blundering back and forth for a while, I found myself before a woman.  For fifty kreutzers she gave me a ticket.  Then she called for Marie.  Marie, a black-eyed, bright German girl, came.  She went to a shelf and burdened herself with a quantity of linen.  Then she signed for me to follow.  I did so in an expectant, wondering and rather anxious frame of mind.  Marie showed me into a neatly-furnished bath-room.  She spread a linen sheet in the tub, and turned on the water.  I waited for the tub to fill and Marie to depart.  Marie seemed in no hurry.  I pondered over the possibilities involved in a German “Warm-bad.”  Perhaps Marie will attempt to scrub me!  Never!  At last she goes.  I remove my collar.  Suddenly Marie returns:  it is to bring another towel.  There is no lock on the door—­nothing with which to defend one’s self.  I bathe in peace, however.  On emerging I examine the pile of linen Marie has left.  There is a small towel, and two large aprons without strings, long enough to reach from the shoulders to the knees.  I study over their possible use.  I conclude they are to dry the anatomy with.  On subsequent inquiry I ascertained that they were to be worn while I rang the bell and Marie came in to substitute hot water for cold.

The American commission to the exhibition occupies a bare, disconsolate, shabby suite of rooms.  They resemble much the editorial offices of those ephemeral daily papers which, commencing with very small capital, after a spasmodic career of a few months fall despairingly into the arms of the sheriff.  I had once occasion to visit the commission on a little matter of business.  What that was I have forgotten:  I recollect only the multiplicity of doors in those apartments.  When I turned to depart, I opened every door but the proper one.  I went into closets, private apartments and intricate passages, and after making the entire round without discovering egress, I made another tour of them, but still could not find where I had entered.  A solitary American was seated in the reading-room looking weary and homesick, and I asked him if he could tell me the right road out of the American commission.  He said he hardly knew:  this was his first visit, but he’d try.  So both of us went prospecting around and opening all the doors we met, while a deaconish old gentleman behind a desk looked on apparently interested, yet offering nothing in the way of information or suggestion.  I presume, however, this is the only amusement the man has in this forlorn place.  I was beginning to think of descending by way of the windows when the strange American at last found a door which led into the main entry, and we both left at the same time, glad to escape.