each other.

"Oh," said he with a little sneer which his slight foreign accent (he
was speaking French) rendered almost ludicrous, "Vienna is a smart town,
but it is nothing to this!" And he pointed with pride to his native
city.

Although I could not exactly agree with this extravagant estimate of the
extent of Pesth, I could not deny that it was vastly superior to my idea
of it. When one arrives there from the south-east, after many wanderings
among semi-barbaric villages and little cities on the outskirts of
civilization, he finds Pesth very impressive. The Hungarian shepherds
and the boatmen who ply between the capital and tiny forts below fancy
that it is the end of the world. They have vaguely heard of Vienna, but
their patriotism is so intense and their round of life so circumscribed
that they never succeed in forming a definite idea of its proportions or
its location. Communication between the two chief towns of the
Austria-Hungarian empire is also much less frequent than one would
imagine. The Hungarians go but little to Vienna, even the members of the
nobility preferring to consecrate their resources to the support of the
splendors of their own city rather than to contribute them to the
Austrian metropolis. Seven hours' ride in what the Austrians are bold
enough to term an express-train covers the distance between Vienna and
Pesth, yet there seems to be an abyss somewhere on the route which the
inhabitants are afraid of. Pride, a haughty determination not to submit
to centralization, and content with their surroundings make the
Hungarians sparing of intercourse with their Austrian neighbors. "We
send them prime ministers, and now and then we allow them a glimpse of
some of our beauties in one of their palaces, but the latter does not
happen very often," once said an Hungarian friend to me.

An American who should arrive in Pesth fancying that he was about to see
a specimen of the dilapidated towns of "effete and decaying Europe"
would find himself vastly mistaken. The beautiful and costly modern
buildings on every principal street, the noble bridges across the vast
river, the fine railway-stations, the handsome theatres, the palatial
hotels, would explain to him why it is that the citizens of Pesth speak
of their town as the "Chicago of the East." There was a time when it
really seemed as if Pesth would rival, if not exceed, Chicago in the
extent of her commerce, the vivacity and boldness of her enterprises