ing. Exceptionally bad weather was another drawback, and
the greed of the Viennese hotel-keepers a third. For such, among other
reasons, the enterprise was financially a failure--a fact which little
concerns those who went to study and learn, and those who three years
later have to describe. If the darkening of the imperial exchequer
prove more than a passing shadow, and an ultimate loss on the
speculation cease to be matter of question, the few millions it cost
may be recovered by the disbanding of a regiment or two. For one
brigade, out of half a million soldiers, to bring the world and its
wealth to the seat of government, is doing better than the usual work
of the bayonet.

The country and the city themselves were a study to foreigners in
many of the modes of life. The extent to which the utilization, as
stationary and locomotive machines, of pigs, cows, women and dogs
was carried elicited constant remark from the Western tourists, with
sundry moral conclusions perhaps too hastily arrived at. This outside
feature of the exposition may serve as an admonition to put our own
surroundings in order. They are not apt to expose us to such comments
as naturally occur to those who have never seen dogs and damsels in
harness together; but other vulnerable points may peradventure be
descried. We must demonstrate our civilization to be complete at
all points, and not simply a coddled exotic under glass. What if our
Viennese guests, physically a stouter race than we, should pronounce
our women _too_ obviously not hod-carriers, and painfully unaccustomed
to wheeling anything heavier than an arm-chair or a piano-stool?

In that land of music concerts could not fail to be a leading feature.
The Boston improvement of emphasizing the bass with discharges of
distant artillery, or its equivalent, the slamming of cellar-doors
nearer by, was not attained. Noise and harmony were kept at arm's
length apart.

The illustration of homes was made a specialty. As at Paris, the
peoples brought their dwellings, or, more often, the dwellings came
without their occupants. The four-footed and feathered live-stock
were of more indubitable authenticity. The display of all the European
breeds of cattle and horses--English Durhams, Alderneys and racers,
Russian trotters, Holstein cows and Flemish mares, the gray oxen of
Hungary and the buffaloes of the Campagna, the wild red pigs of the
Don and the razor-backs of Southern France--was calculated to am