The maid did not seem to be able to comprehend the brand of German I use in casual conversation; so, through an interpreter, I explained to her that I was shy one white vest.  For two days she brought all sorts of vests and submitted them to me on approval—­thin ones and thick ones; old ones and new ones; slick ones and woolly ones; fringed ones and frayed ones.  I think the woman had a private vest mine somewhere, and went and tapped a fresh vein on my account every few minutes; but it never was the right vest she brought me.

Finally I told her in my best German, meantime accompanying myself with appropriate yet graceful gestures, that she need not concern herself further with the affair; she could just let the matter drop and I would interview the manager and put in a claim for the value of the lost garment.  She looked at me dazedly a moment while I repeated the injunction more painstakingly than before; and, at that, understanding seemed to break down the barriers of her reason and she said, “Ja!  Ja!” Then she nodded emphatically several times, smiled and hurried away and in twenty minutes was back, bringing with her a begging friar of some monastic order or other.

I would take it as a personal favor if some student of the various Teutonic tongues and jargons would inform me whether there is any word in Viennese for white vest that sounds like Catholic priest!  However, we prayed together—­that brown brother and I. I do not know what he prayed for, but I prayed for my vest.

I never got it though.  I doubt whether my prayer ever reached heaven—­it had such a long way to go.  It is farther from Vienna to heaven than from any other place in the world, I guess—­unless it is Paris.  That vest is still wandering about the damp-filled corridors of that hotel, mooing in a plaintive manner for its mate —­which is myself.  It will never find a suitable adopted parent.  It was especially coopered to my form by an expert clothing contractor, and it will not fit anyone else.  No; it will wander on and on, the starchy bulge of its bosom dimly phosphorescent in the gloaming, its white pearl buttons glimmering spectrally; and after a while the hotel will get the reputation of being haunted by the ghost of a flour barrel, and will have a bad name and lose custom.  I hope so anyway.  It looks to be my one chance of getting even with the owner for penalizing me in the matter of baths.

From Vienna we went southward into the Tyrolese Alps.  It was a wonderful ride—­that ride through the Semmering and on down to Northern Italy.  Our absurdly short little locomotive, drawing our absurdly long train, went boring in and out of a wrinkly shoulder-seam of the Tyrols like a stubby needle going through a tuck.  I think in thirty miles we threaded thirty tunnels; after that I was practically asphyxiated and lost count.