he falls to sleep, enveloped in a caressing miasma of
almost unearthly respectability.

But is it true that Vienna is the home of purity, of early retirers, of
phlegmatic and virtuous souls? Are its gaieties mere febrile imaginings
of liquorish dreamers? Is it, after all, the Los Angeles of Europe? Or,
despite its appearances, is it truly the gayest city in the world,
redolent of romance, bristling with intrigue, polluted with perfume? It
is. And, furthermore, it is far gayer than its reputation; for all has
never been told. Gaiety in Vienna is an end, not a means. It is born in
the blood of the people. The carnival spirit reigns. There are almost no
restrictions, no engines of repression. Alongside the real Viennese
night life, the blatant and spectacular caprices of Paris are so much
tinsel. The life on the Friedrichstrasse, the brightest and most active
street in Europe, becomes tawdry when compared with the secret glories
of the Kaerntnerring. In the one instance we have gaiety on parade, in
strumpet garb--the simulacrum of sin--gaiety dramatised. In the other
instance, it is an ineradicable factor of the city's life.

To appreciate these differences, one must understand the temperamental
appeals of the Viennese. With them gaiety comes under the same
physiological category as chilblains, hunger and fatigue. It is accepted
as one of the natural and necessary adjuncts of life like eating and
sleeping and lovemaking. It is an item in their pharmacopoeia. They do
not make a business of pleasure any more than the Englishman makes a
business of walking, or the American of drinking Peruna or the German of
beerbibbing. For this reason, pleasure in Vienna is not elaborate and
external. It is a private, intimate thing in which every citizen
participates according to his standing and his pocketbook. The Austrians
do not commercialize their pleasure in the hope of wheedling dollars
from American pockets. Such is not their nature. And so the slumming
traveller, lusting for obscure and fascinating debaucheries, finds
little in Vienna to attract him.

Vienna is perhaps the one city in the world which maintains a
consistent attitude of genuine indifference toward the outsider, which
resents the intrusion of snoopers from these pallid States, which
deliberately makes it difficult for foreign Florizels to find diversion.
The liveliest places in Vienna present the gloomiest exteriors. The
official guides maintain a cloistered silenc