A seasonable Sunday is a fine time; and the big Zoological Garden, which is a favorite place for studying the Berlin populace at the diversions they prefer when left to their own devices.  At one table will be a cluster of students, with their queer little pill-box caps of all colors, their close-cropped heads and well-shaved necks, and their saber-scarred faces.  At the next table half a dozen spectacled, long-coated men, who look as though they might be university professors, are confabbing earnestly.  And at the next table and the next and the next—­and so on, until the aggregate runs into big figures—­are family groups—­grandsires, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles and children, on down to the babies in arms.  By the uncountable thousands they spend the afternoon here, munching sausages and sipping lager, and enjoying the excellent music that is invariably provided.  At each plate there is a beer mug, for everybody is forever drinking and nobody is ever drunk.  You see a lot of this sort of thing, not only in the parks and gardens so numerous in and near any German city but anywhere on the Continent.  Seeing it helps an American to understand a main difference between the American Sabbath and the European Sunday.  We keep it and they spend it.

I am given to understand that Vienna night life is the most alluring, the most abandoned, the most wicked and the wildest of all night life.  Probably this is so—­certainly it is the most cloistered and the most inaccessible.  The Viennese does not deliberately exploit his night life to prove to all the world that he is a gay dog and will not go home until morning though it kill him—­as the German does.  Neither does he maintain it for the sake of the coin to be extracted from the pockets of the tourist, as do the Parisians.  With him his night life is a thing he has created and which he supports for his own enjoyment.

And so it goes on—­not out in the open; not press-agented; not advertised; but behind closed doors.  He does not care for the stranger’s presence, nor does he suffer it either—­unless the stranger is properly vouched for.  The best theaters in Vienna are small, exclusive affairs, privately supported, and with seating capacity for a few chosen patrons.  Once he has quit the public cafe with its fine music and its bad waiters the uninitiated traveler has a pretty lonesome time of it in Vienna.  Until all hours he may roam the principal streets seeking that fillip of wickedness which will give zest to life and provide him with something to brag about when he gets back among the home folks again.  He does not find it.  Charades would provide a much more exciting means of spending the evening; and, in comparison with the sights he witnesses, anagrams and acrostics are positively thrilling.