Bathrooms are plentiful at the hotel where we stopped at Berlin.  I had rather hoped to find the bedroom equipped with an old-fashioned German feather bed.  I had heard that one scaled the side of a German bed on a stepladder and then fell headlong into its smothering folds like a gallant fireman invading a burning rag warehouse; but this hotel happened to be the best hotel that I ever saw outside the United States.  It had been built and it was managed on American lines, plus German domestic service—­which made an incomparable combination—­and it was furnished with modern beds and provided with modern bathrooms.

Probably as a delicate compliment to the Kaiser, the bathtowels were starched until the fringes at the ends bristled up stiffly a-curl, like the ends of His Imperial Majesty’s equally imperial mustache.  Just once—­and once only—­I made the mistake of rubbing myself with one of those towels just as it was.  I should have softened it first by a hackling process, as we used to hackle the hemp in Kentucky; but I did not.  For two days I felt like an etching.  I looked something like one too.

In Vienna we could not get a bedroom with a bathroom attached —­they did not seem to have any—­but we were told there was a bathroom just across the hall which we might use with the utmost freedom.  This bathroom was a large, long, loftly, marble-walled vault.  It was as cold as a tomb and as gloomy as one, and very smelly.  Indeed it greatly resembled the pictures I have seen of the sepulcher of an Egyptian king—­only I would have said that this particular king had been skimpily embalmed by the royal undertakers in the first place, and then imperfectly packed.  The bathtub was long and marked with scars, and it looked exactly like a rifled mummy case with the lid missing, which added greatly to the prevalent illusion.

We used this bathroom ad lib.:  but when I went to pay the bill I found an official had been keeping tabs on us, and that all baths taken had been charged up at the rate of sixty cents apiece.  I had provided my own soap too!  For that matter the traveler provides his own soap everywhere in Europe, outside of England.  In some parts soap is regarded as an edible and in some as a vice common to foreigners; but everywhere except in the northern countries it is a curio.

So in Vienna they made us furnish our own soap and then charged us more for a bath than they did for a meal.  Still, by their standards, I dare say they were right.  A meal is a necessity, but a bath is an exotic luxury; and, since they have no extensive tariff laws in Austria, it is but fair that the foreigner should pay the tax.  I know I paid mine, one way or another.

Speaking of bathing reminds me of washing; and speaking of washing reminds me of an adventure I had in Vienna in connection with a white waistcoat—­or, as we would call it down where I was raised, a dress vest.  This vest had become soiled through travel and wear across Europe.  At Vienna I intrusted it to the laundry along with certain other garments.  When the bundle came back my vest was among the missing.