y city from your terrace, you will see happy well-dressed crowds
moving to one or other place whence rise the strains of music. From one
side you hear the solemn notes of the fanfarade from Libu[vs]a; a little
farther away a very cheery brass band is stirring its audience with a
rattling march--impossible to keep your feet still; then while the brass
band pauses for breath and beer the insistent cadence of a dreamy valse
floats up to meet you.

Finest of all was Stromovka. Here weeping willows trailed their weeds of
daintiest green; here vigorous chestnut buds threw out their strong
scent; here osier-beds were a living tangle of gold and crimson
reflected brokenly in the lake where frogs made merry, the frogs being
about the only wild animals left in the Stromovka. Things were very
different in this park when it was known as the Thiergarten, Hortus
Ferarum, as long ago as the days of King John, the knight-errant ruler
of Bohemia. It appears that bison, "aurochs," were kept here, and it is
recorded that the sole surviving specimen died in 1566, which fact
Archduke Ferdinand, the Kaiser's lieutenant, reported to Emperor
Maximilian; he was thereupon ordered to ask the Duke of Prussia to
oblige with a new couple of bison.

The Stromovka was at one time described as "where the ox preaches on a
sack of straw," which description was probably meant to be humorous. The
connection comes about by the fact that the tailors of the town held
their revels in the Thiergarten every Tuesday in Easter week, and it
seems that a sack of straw was necessary to their happiness. This sack,
of the finest white linen, was sewn up with great neatness and adorned
with bows of ribbon, red, blue, yellow, green and white, by the
apprentices. The sack was further decorated with a design representing a
lass and a lad.

There seems to have been no particular object for the sack, as it was
only fastened to a pole round which danced young men and maidens. As the
gay Czechs of the present day are ready to dance without any such
fortuitous aid, it may be presumed that there was some meaning in the
idea of carrying a sack about and then dancing round it; but the
chronicler does not mention this point--he probably missed it.

Not to be outdone by the tailors, the cobblers of Prague had their day
on the Wednesday after Easter, and went for their diversion in an
opposite direction, namely, to Nusle, which lies tucked away behind
Vy[vs]ehrad. The cobblers' f