"But why not marry? You had better change your mind—indeed you had: I advise you for your good."

"You say I must not select a poor man, and the rich require too much devotion from the ladies. You gentlemen let us take all the trouble to please: you present yourselves, and expect us to fall at your feet.I am waiting for a chevalier who will go the world over to win me—who will consider it an honor if I finally accept him, instead of fancying, that I am honored by his choice."

"I used to have ideas of that kind, but found them false. It is an honor to receive a proposal, you know. Every one thinks so, else they would not tell of it and brag as they do. By being so unlike the rest of the world you will end badly—indeed you will, Miss Blanche."

"Look for a moment at the case as I put it. A man asks me to marry him: he likes me—thinks I shall make him a good wife. He woos me to please himself, not to please me, and you think I should be grateful because his vanity prompts him to believe that I am highly honored. But this is only one of the many fallacies which people adopt without question. It is good for a man to be refused several times: it takes some little conceit out of him, and makes him more humble and nice for the poor woman who is ultimately to be his wife. I am convinced that there is no gentleman who makes his first proposal that has a doubt of his being accepted. Now, is there?" she asked, appealing to me.

"Well, you are about right. Women are not so particular about making a choice, you know. It isn't so hard for them to find, somebody that suits. I suppose I should be accepted by any girl I might ask. Frankly, now," I said, wishing to give her a poser, "wouldn't you accept me?"

"Frankly," she replied, taking my own tone, "I would not."

"And why not?" I asked.

"There would be too many young ladies made unhappy through losing you," she answered banteringly.

"But you know I should not care for that: I can't marry them all."

"You told me you thought it your duty to please everybody."

"Come, now, think of it, and tell the real truth: you know if I marry it would have to be but one girl."

"You might go to Utah."

"You won't answer. Silence gives consent, don't it?" I said in a tone of triumph.

"Do you really want me to answer your question?" she asked, looking at me queerly.

"By Jove!" I thought, "it's coming now. I've pushed it too far—never thought what I was doing: she will certainly accept me, and I cannot retract." It took me but a moment to see my danger and to make up my mind. A gentleman will always sustain his word. My voice was shaking a little from the greatness of the resolution I had made, but I managed to say pretty steadily, "Of course I do." It was so very sudden, you know. I felt I should be an engaged man in five minutes more.

"You are awfully funny," she exclaimed after quite a pause.

"I believe I am considered witty," I replied, hardly knowing what I said: I tell you, that sort of thing makes a man confoundedly nervous.

Then she began laughing, and I thought she, would never stop. I did not feel like laughing, so I just sat and looked at her.

"Oh my! oh my!" she gasped, trying to control herself, "why didn't you say No? You never intended to ask me at all. It is the funniest thing I ever heard of. Oh my! I shall die of laughing. I think you will 'end badly' if you go on so," she said, quoting what I had repeated. "What induced you to act in this manner?"

I saw that she had found me out and thought I was a fool. This provoked me, and I replied, rather warmly, pretending I did not know what she meant, "It appears to me an odd manner you have of receiving an offer, Miss Blanche. I think you should at least treat me with politeness."

She became serious in a moment when she saw I was hurt, and did not lose her good-temper at my rude speech, but said pleasantly, "You are not fond of being teased, Mr. Highrank. Never mind: I don't intend to take advantage of your blunder, nor keep you long in suspense. Go "—and she smiled as if she really could not help it—"go, and be sensible in future."

"You mean that you won't marry me?" I asked.

"Don't talk of that: let us pretend we were in fun—as of course we were—and let me thank you for a very agreeable afternoon."

I declare she looked so bewitching as she spoke that I wished she had thought me in earnest and accepted me. It was real good in her, giving a fellow a second chance when she might have snapped him up directly. I think girls ought to give a man two chances, but they seldom do. Many a poor soul repents the moment the words are spoken, but he can't help himself. Generally, when 'tis done 'tis done.

She made a motion to rise: I could not permit her to go without an explanation. She had been so generous, and she was so beautiful, that I began to desire quite earnestly that she would be my wife, and that we could settle down at The Beauties together: she would like the sorrel at any rate. Perhaps Fortune had sent her to me this very afternoon, and I ought not to let the opportunity slip, but ask her seriously before she left. Of course she would accept me if she knew I was in earnest. She was too delicate to take advantage of a mistake—mighty few girls so particular. The more I entertained the idea, the more I liked it, so I resolved to speak. I fancied that she was a little cool in her manner: possibly she thought I ought not have jested on such a subject, but I would make it all right now. I was sitting on a stone a little lower than she. I leaned forward and placed my arm on the rock and round her—just near enough to keep her there, you know. Then I spoke: "I want to beg your pardon, Miss Blanche. You are offended, but I did not mean to annoy you: I esteem you too highly for that."

"I am not at all offended, not at all," she said heartily, at the same time trying to rise, but as I was leaning on her dress she could not. "I must beg you to move: I am going home," she added, looking round: then seeing where my arm was, her tone became slightly angry: "Will you allow me to rise?"

"Not until you listen to me. Do not be displeased when I tell you the truth. I was jesting, or at least did not think what I was asking, a moment ago, but now I am in real earnest. I want you to marry me—truly I do. I love you, and am willing to do everything you can desire. See, I will kneel if you like devotion;" and I fell on my knees before her, catching her little white hands and kissing them. "Won't you love me?" I felt as I looked into her sweet face that I could do anything in the world for her.

"A little less devotion and more respect would suit me better, Mr. Highrank. Will you stop this farce and release my dress? I shall certainly be offended if you do not rise instantly."

"I will obey you if you will give me one kind word."

"I have none for you," she said frigidly.

"You think I have been too hasty—that I am not really in love with you; but I am, I assure you. I fall, in love very quickly—indeed I do. I have often been in love with a girl the first time I saw her, and I have known you ever so long. Won't you believe me, Blanche?"

"I believe you are treating me in a most ungentlemanly manner in keeping me here when I don't wish to stay."

"I can't let you go," I said as I rose, but standing so that she could not pass, "till you are convinced that I love you, for I do, and shall always. Surely I have a right to an answer."

"I thought you were good-natured"—now she spoke reproachfully—"and you are teasing me in the most disagreeable way. Please let me pass."

"Do you think me so base as to tease you on such a subject? What shall I do to persuade you that I am sincere."

"Let me go home."

"May I go with you?"

"I would rather you did not come, please."

"Why are you so unkind?" I asked, taking her hand. "Tell me you love me, and let us be happy."

"But I don't love you," she said, trying to withdraw her hand, and the tears coming into her eyes. "I don't love you, and I want to go home." She turned from me to hide her face, looking about at the same time for some way of escape.

"But you will love me by to-morrow," I replied soothingly. "I may ask you again, may I not?" and then she looked so pitiful, with the tears rolling from her frightened eyes and her hand trembling in mine, that I thought I would put my arm around her—to comfort her, you know. "Poor child!" I said, drawing her to me as they do in the theatre, "you don't know your own heart: rest here."

I wish you had seen her!—I wish you had seen her! She drew herself from me quivering with indignation, her eyes% sparkled, and she was in such a rage that she could hardly speak, but after an effort she broke forth in a torrent of words: "I have an utter contempt for you, and I will bear this no longer. You think you are irresistible—that all the girls are in love with you—that your wealth buys you impunity—that your position will excuse your rudeness—and that you can dispense with politeness because your name is Highrank! I would like to box your ears. I despise you and your behavior so thoroughly that were you a hundred times in earnest in asking me to marry you, I would refuse you a hundred times!" Then she rushed past me, and I was so astonished that I did not try to prevent her.

The idea of her refusing me, and in such a manner! No wonder if she should end badly. Mrs. Stunner was right. However, I am glad she did refuse me, for she must certainly be a little wrong in her head. Wonder if her ancestors were insane or anything. She was deuced handsome when she got angry. Never saw a woman angry at me before: something very queer about her. Had a contempt for me, too! Why should she have that? I don't understand it. Said I was conceited—that I thought all the girls would marry me. And so they would, all but herself; and that shows there is something odd about her—not at all like any other woman. Deuced glad she did not take me at my word. Queerest thing! She cried when I put my arm around her: never knew a woman would cry at that before. Little Eva wouldn't. I believe I like tender women best—at one time I thought they were not nice. What a fool I was! What should I do with a wife I could not kiss? I wonder if Blanche will speak to me again? Maybe all this was a dodge, women have so many; but she looked in earnest. I might have frightened her by being so sudden, but why the deuce should women be frightened at proposals, when they pass their lives in trying to get them? So Mrs. Stunner said. Poor birdie!, what a soft hand she has! Maybe some women are modest: I will ask Hardcash about it. She may not have known what she was saying—agitated, and all that sort of thing. I will see how she acts to-night—need not ask her again if she is not civil. Eva will comfort me if I need it. What a sweet voice she had till she got angry! but she was very odd.

I strolled home to the hotel, musing over the adventure of the afternoon. Blanche was a girl who might be included in the star type that I had once sought for: wanted to be worshiped and play the superior. Now that I had found her I was surprised how little I liked that style. Just as if a good-looking fellow like me was a bear or a wild Indian, to be afraid of! I don't see that she would have been any the worse for it if I had kissed her; and wasn't I as respectful as her nearest relation? 'Pon honor I was. A very odd girl. I shall ask Ned Hardcash about it.



CHAPTER IV.

I never saw Eva looking better than she did that night. I lounged around the room until I came to her crowd, attached myself there, and did some heavy flirting. I asked her to take a moonlight stroll, but her aunt overheard me and gave her a look, upon which she said the air outside was too cool. I saw the play was to be above-board. Aunt Stunner had taken matters into her own hands, and the game had commenced in earnest. Mr. David Todd, Jr., was there, and Eva paid him a good deal of attention: I did not like it.

Presently she went off to dance with him, and Aunt Stunner sat down by me. Fanning herself energetically, she said in a confidential tone, "Eva is looking sweetly to-night: don't you think so, Mr. Highrank?"

"Miss Eva always looks jolly," I said shortly. I did not want to talk to the old lady.

"Mr. Todd appears to think so too," she went on with a nod and a knowing look at me. Evidently she was playing Todd against Highrank.

"Mr. David Todd, Jr.?" I asked languidly: "he has thirty thousand a year, hasn't he?"

She looked at me sharply for an instant, then smiled and said, "How should I know, dear Mr. Highrank? It is his rare personal merit that pleases me. I own I am happy to see him so attentive to the child for her sake. She is so impulsive and innocent, so likely to fancy a younger, more dashing kind of man"—here she glanced at me—"that I acknowledge I do feel anxious to have her settled happily. Not but that some young men are exceptions," she continued amiably, "and make excellent husbands."

"There are two classes of men," I remarked quietly. "They can be divided into those who make good husbands and those who don't. Wealthy men are the most superior, and are best fitted to fill the situation."

"I agree with you entirely: you are a very sensible young man," enthusiastically replied the old lady, not recognizing the quotation.

We talked on until Eva came back: then I claimed the next waltz, and decided I would carry her off from Todd. I pressed her hand, but she would not respond: it was plain she was obeying orders.

"Won't you walk with me?" I whispered as we were near an open window in a pause of the dance.

"I can't, Charley—indeed I can't," as I tried to draw her outside: "I will explain another time."

"You are very cruel," I continued in the same undertone.

"You don't care if I am," she said a little bitterly.

"As if I do not care when you use me badly! Won't you tell me what is the matter?" I asked tenderly.

"Oh, Mr. Highrank, I am so unhappy!" she whispered.

"Why so, my dear?" No one could help calling Eva "my dear"; besides, we were hidden by the heavy window curtain and no one overheard us.

"I—I—am going to be married," she said.

"It appears to me that ought to make you particularly merry, oughtn't it?"

"But it don't," she answered, sighing.

"Why not, you foolish girl?"

"Oh, everything is so different from what I expected."

"In what way?"

"W-h-y," she answered slowly, "I thought it would be romantic, and that he would ask me in the moonlight."

"Like to-night, for instance?" I said, taking her hand and drawing her through the low window on to the piazza.

"Yes," she replied, "and instead of that—"

"Well, instead of that?" I repeated, seeing she paused.

"Instead of that, it was in that old parlor of ours. I have never had a nice time since we took it two weeks ago, odious green place! I detest green furniture; it is so unbecoming," she said pathetically.

"And who is the happy dog—I mean gentleman'—Eva? I may call you Eva, just for this evening yet, mayn't I?"

"I don't care if—if—Oh my! what a name! Charley, did you ever hear such a dreadful name as David?"

"What! old Todd? It isn't old Todd?" I asked, laughing.

"It is very unkind of you to laugh when you know I must marry him."

"I won't laugh," I said, putting her arm in mine and walking down the verandah. "Come, sit on this sofa and tell me all about it."

"Well," she said, half pouting and half crying, "I must marry some one this season—both mamma and auntie say so—and I can't marry Ned."

"Ned Hardcash? You don't mean to say he was spooney on you?"

"Yes he was, but I told him he was too poor."

"You are very reasonable, Eva."

"You need not talk that way. Mamma would not hear of it. I could not let him ask her, for she would have been so angry, and she and auntie would have scolded me; and you don't know how fearfully auntie can abuse one when she begins."

"How did Ned take your answer?"

"Oh, he just went away, and did not care a bit, and I have not seen him since."

"He did not care?" thinking I now had the clew to Ned's savage manner for the week past. "When did it happen?"

"I can't exactly remember: it was soon after we took the parlor. Auntie would not let me invite him there, and he got angry and jealous of Mr. Todd, who was with me all the time, and—"

"But that showed he loved you, don't you think so?"

"Well, perhaps he did a little: he told me if I Would trust him he would not let mamma or auntie scold; but you know that was nonsense. I would like to see any one prevent them if they want to do it. And he hadn't any money, and we should have starved: I told him so. Then he said there was no danger of that: he could manage to keep the wolf from the door. I knew of course that be could easily keep wolves away, for there are none here, and I would not live in that horrid West; but that would not prevent us starving: auntie said we would starve."

"Poor Ned!" I murmured.

"You pity poor Ned," said she, now sobbing, "but you don't pity poor me at all, and I am the most wretched."

"Come, don't cry, Eva," I said, putting my arm around her: it was very dark in that corner, and I knew Eva would not fuss about it, as a certain other person did not long ago. "What shall I do for you, my dear? Do you want Ned back? I'll tell him and make it up between you: shall I?"

"No, no! He is so cross and fierce that I should be afraid of him: he was dreadfully ill-tempered when he left me that night."

"But that was because he loved you, Eva."

"When people love me I don't want them to be disagreeable: I should not want to vex any one if I loved him."

"You will make a dear, kind, amiable little wife, I know."

"But I don't want to marry Mr. Todd," she said, still sobbing on my shoulder. "Oh, Charley, what shall I do?"

Could I find a lovelier, more tender, sweeter wife than the girl now in my arms? My ideas of affectionate women had changed, dating from about two weeks back, and the conduct of Miss Blanche, who would neither see me nor speak to me since that afternoon, strengthened me in the opinion that a woman is best with some heart. Was it any wonder, then, that I decided on the spot to answer Eva's question of "Charley, what shall I do?" by saying "Marry me, my dear: 'tis the only way I see for you to get out of the scrape"? Just as my resolve became fixed I heard footsteps near. In another moment, scarcely giving Eva time to wipe her eyes, those three sisters, the Greys, came trooping by, and stopped in front of us.

"Spooning as usual?" remarked one of them to me.

"Miss Eva, won't you ask Mr. Todd to give him a lesson in proposing? I don't believe he knows how to do it. A deplorable state of ignorance!" said another.

A merry group soon joined them, and I did not get another chance that evening. However, I went to my room happy, for I knew I should be successful on the morrow. Eva loved me: her mother had said as much when I overheard her in the arbor on the mountain-side, and I knew Aunt Stunner would have no objection, as my income exceeded Todd's. In an easy-chair by the open window I thought over my resolution, and counted myself a fortunate man. In the midst of this reverie the door burst open, shut with a bang, and Ned Hardcash threw himself on a fauteuil opposite me.

"What's up now?" I cried. "Has Harry Basset lost?" Ned was always deep on the turf, and I could think of nothing else that would cut him up so much.

"D——n Harry Basset! I say, Charley, haven't you some brandy?"

"Too hot for brandy to-night," I said: "take some of this," pushing him a bottle.

"Stuff!" and he looked at it contemptuously. "If you can't treat a poor devil more like a man when he comes, he will go;" and he rose with a jerk.

"Sit down, old fellow! or rather go to that closet and get what you want—enough there for a night or two."

He looked the worse for hard drink already, but of course I could not refuse him if he wanted it. It is true politeness, if your friend wants to commit suicide, to sharpen the razor for him and ask no questions. I leaned back while he mixed a glass with seltzer and drank it greedily. Finally, when he looked more composed, I said, "I want to ask you a question, Ned." I thought of Blanche Furnaval's strange conduct on seeing Ned before me, and resolved to ask him if he could explain it. "I believe you know something about the queer ways of women. Can you tell—"

"Look here, Charley," he broke out savagely: "I want one thing understood. You are always teasing and bothering about the women; and as you have not got a piece of flesh as big as a pea for a heart, you will never understand anything about them; so, if you don't want to set me crazy, just let that subject down while I am here."

"It's a woman, then," I said, forgetting in my surprise to be angry. "Cheer up, old boy! You will soon get over it: no woman's worth it."

"Not to you, perhaps, but it may be the contrary with me," he answered moodily.

There was a long silence. I smoked, he drank: at last I broke it by saying unconsciously, "She is a dear little thing." My thoughts had reverted to Eva.

"Ah, you saw it?" cried Ned eagerly. "Then I can talk to you about it. You may well say she is a dear little thing. She is an angel—too good for a fellow like me. But the poor child dotes on me: that is the hardest part of the cursed thing. How she laid her head on my shoulder and cried, and said she did not want to marry that other fellow, d——n him! It almost broke my heart," he continued dejectedly, "and it is not of the stuff that breaks easily. I told her I would take her off and we would run for it, though Heaven knows what we should do afterward. Sometimes it seems as if I could not bear it. I wish I could strangle Todd: that would be some comfort."

"What makes you so savage against old Todd?"

"Don't you know he and Eva are engaged? All owing to the interference of that old Stunner. What business was it of hers, I wonder? And poor Eva disliking him as she does, and so unhappy about it, and I can't help her! My cursed luck, always;" and Ned heaved a brandy-and-seltzer sigh.

Yes, it was Eva. I had forgotten all she had told me about Ned, or rather she had not told me as much as he did. She sobbed on his shoulder, did she? His shoulder! disgusting! She dote on him! he comfort her! It was horrible! A sudden idea struck me. "Did you kiss her, Ned?" I asked gruffly.

"You are asking a d——d impertinent question, old fellow, and of course I sha'n't answer you;" and he tried to make his drunken face look grave.

I should have liked to throw him out of the window, but the question was, as he said, hardly one to be asked; and then, if she allowed it, what right had I—It was enough. It might be pleasant to have an affectionate wife, but no drinking gambler like Ned Hardcash should ever be able to say or remember that he had kissed the mistress of The Beauties.

I was sad at heart: hope now failed me. Poor little Eva! I must bury her image with the "wild rose," with "my star," with the "sympathizing friend." All, all are emptiness—are names, are dreams. The poets were old-fogy chaps: they never saw the women of to-day, and well for them they did not.

I am still unmated: I bear the loneliness that awaits all great excellence. The sun has no companion in glory; the moon shines alone; there was but one phoenix; the white elephant is solitary. So it must be with me. I am not misanthropic: I have learned to bear my superiority with philosophy. I was groomsman at Eva's wedding the other day, and gave her a handsome present, as it was expected I should. I still like my fellow-beings, and fulfill the duties of life to the best of my abilities. I flirt, I dance, walk, drive, pursue my usual occupations, give bachelor-parties at The Beauties, and have grown contented from habit, but I am a confirmed old—or shall I say young?—bachelor.

ITA ANIOL PROKOP.



MUNICH AS A PEST-CITY.

From a time whereof the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, Munich has had the reputation of being an exceptionally unhealthy place. All ancient towns have their legends of desolating plagues, the record of an ignorant defiance of sanitary laws, but such stories are especially numerous in the traditions of Munich, and are connected with circumstances which show that epidemic diseases were formerly extremely frequent and virulent in that City.

The absurd festival of the "Metzger-Sprung" (Butchers' Leap), which takes place annually on the Monday before Ash-Wednesday, when butcher-boys attain to the second grade of their apprenticeship by dressing themselves in long robes trimmed with calves' tails, and springing into the old fountain in the Marien-Platz in the face of an admiring crowd, is held in commemoration of a similar frolic contrived several hundred years ago by lads of the same trade during the prevalence of a horrible epidemic, for the purpose of tempting the frightened citizens out of their gloomy houses into fresh air and merriment, which these sensible youths had concluded to be the best safeguards against disease. The grotesque procession of the "Schaeffler-Tanz" (Coopers' Dance), which occurs once in every seven years, just before the Carnival, has a similar origin. One of the favorite myths of Munich is that of an enormous dragon which lived in the ground beneath the city and poisoned all the wells with his venomous breath, until, being at last lured to the surface by seeing his reflection in a mirror held above a certain spring, a brave knight slew him and saved the people from further destruction. The former imminence of danger from pestilence is shown also in the songs of the night-watchmen, who every hour exhorted to prayer for exemption from the plague, as well as from the terrors of fire, sword and famine.

And this evil fame still clings to Munich, in spite of all that has been done to improve its condition, and of all that has been written to purge it of its contempt. Efforts of the latter kind have indeed been prodigious, increasing with the growing importance of the place as a centre of education in science and art. Local medical authorities issue from time to time ingenious pamphlets on hygienic investigations, with particular application to the suspicion under which their city labors in this regard; the newspapers keep up the whitewashing process with diligence, not forgetting to hold up frequently before their readers the sanitary shortcomings of Vienna and Berlin; nay, the traveler is met at the very threshold of his hotel by a tiny tract containing not only a list of the principal sights, but also a comforting assurance that the climate is not so bad as has been represented, and that by wearing sufficient wrappings and avoiding the ordinary drinking water, strangers may hope to accomplish their visit and escape unharmed. Surely no other city takes such benevolent pains to reassure its inhabitants and instruct and warn its stranger-guests: perhaps it is because deeds have not kept pace with words that assertion and argument have hitherto failed of the desired effect. The protracted, repeated cholera epidemic of 1873-74 may well challenge a close observation of the situation, surroundings and sanitary condition of Munich as a means of ascertaining the causes of this exceptional visitation, as well as of the continual existence of an indigenous disease which, more than almost any other, is dependent upon circumstances within the power of man to control.

Instead, therefore, of constructing the cholera and the typhus out of our "inner consciousness," as certain of the physicians and hygienists of Munich, in true German fashion, appear disposed to do, let us look at some of the facts of the case—facts sufficiently obvious to be perceptible to any person of intelligence, and the nature of which is so well understood as to be accepted at once as bearing closely upon the subject in question.

And first, as to climate. Considering that the cholera, from which Munich suffers more at every visitation than almost any other European city, and typhus, which is always at home within its limits, are not, properly speaking, climatal diseases, it would seem at first sight unnecessary to consider the situation of Munich in this respect. But while the principal object of the present paper is to indicate the causes of the above-mentioned plagues, the fact should not be lost sight of that nearly all known diseases flourish in this unfortunate city, many of them owing to its exceptionally bad climate, while the sudden and extreme changes of temperature which occur in every season of the year have a tendency to aggravate those ills which find their sources in more preventable conditions.

Munich stands upon a high, barren plain, sixteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, exposed to the full power of the sun in summer, brooded over by chilly fogs in spring and autumn, and swept the whole year through by all the storms that accumulate upon the mountains filling the horizon to the south and east. The air is mountain-air, minus the aroma and stimulus of evergreen forests, and plus the miasma of miles of marsh and peat-land and the foulnesses of the city exhalations. It is the thin air of a high elevation, pleasantly bracing to persons so fortunate as to possess nerves of iron and lungs of leather, but extremely irritating to sensitive brains and delicate chests, and too exhausting, after a time, in its demands upon the most abundant vitality. It is the boast of certain physicians in Munich that consumption is rare in that city, but the weekly report of deaths would seem to contradict this assertion. Certain it is that diseases of the throat and lungs are very common, especially during the spring, and that all the rest of the year the whole population suffers more or less from catarrh. Perhaps if there be less of consumption than one would expect to find in such a climate, it is because those who would otherwise be its victims are carried off early by acute inflammation of the implicated organs. "Of course, if these die in the beginning, they cannot die at a later period," as a recent medical writer has wisely and wittily pointed out to certain amateur statisticians who would fain reduce the mortality of Munich by leaving out of view the immense percentage of infant deaths.

The evil effects of the harsh air are increased by the clouds of dust which the wind is continually raising in the broad graveled streets—dust the more irritating to eyes, nose and lungs because largely composed of lime, and which dries with marvelous rapidity after the frequent heavy showers and protracted rains for which this region is also remarkable. It is the last resort of the citizens of Munich, when driven out of every other defence of their climate, to say, "But it is a good climate for the nerves." One would like to know for what nerves and whose nerves, since strangers who reside here for any length of time generally find that any constitutional tendency to ailments in which the nerves are principally involved is increased, instead of lessened; and among the natives themselves brain diseases, strokes of all kinds, fits and cramps, are frequent and fatal, while the enemy which they fear the most, and which presses them the hardest, is known by them as "nervous fever," The air is too stimulating for any but the most robust constitutions; and the sudden blasts of fierce wind that continually interrupt the enjoyment of even the few days of otherwise pleasant weather, and the intolerable glare of the sun upon the dusty streets and squares and monotonous rows, of light-colored houses, unrelieved, for the most part, by trees or vines or any green thing, are perpetual irritants which must react unfavorably upon the general health. Indeed, one begins at last to find in the harshness of the climate some explanation, if not excuse, for the roughness of disposition and manner which have made the people of Munich a proverb among their countrymen and a terror to foreign residents.

Another cause of the unhealthiness of Munich is the nature of the soil. The ground upon which the city is built, as also the land for a considerable distance round about, was formerly the bed of a lake, and consists of a loose gravel to the depth of many feet, there being scarcely enough earth upon the top to furnish subsistence for the commonest grass and weeds, while trees, esculent vegetables and flowers can only be raised by preparing a new soil, which must be continually enriched by artificial means. A proverb says, "Scratch a Russian and the Tartar shows through;" so one has only to stir the soil of Munich to find just below the surface the coarse gravel, defying cultivation. Of course, all the fluid matter deposited upon the surface that does not exhale in the atmosphere percolates through this loose stratum until it reaches the rock, where it stagnates and corrupts, returning into the air in the form of poisonous gases, instead of undergoing the healthy transformation which is effected in all soils capable of sustaining vegetable life. If the fluid thus held in solution were only the rain from heaven, the result would not be so disastrous; but, unfortunately, there is scarcely any kind of filth that is not allowed to contribute constantly to the subterranean supply of moisture. It has been estimated that of the seventy-five thousand tons of refuse matter which Munich furnishes within a year, scarcely one-third is carried out of the city: the rest is suffered to go into the ground upon the spot. Nor can that third which is gathered up be considered as taken out of harm's way, since all of it that can be regarded as manure is spread at once upon the neighboring fields, whence it sends back its stenches upon every wind that blows.

The people of Munich, according to one of their most famous chroniclers, have always been noted for their piety ("Fromm waren die Muenchner zu jeder Zeit"), but they have never been celebrated for that virtue of cleanliness which is said to be akin to godliness: indeed, they are known amongst other Bavarians as die dreckigen Muenchner ("the filthy Munichers"); and certain it is that their city is far behind the times in all sanitary matters. The introduction of sewers is a very recent improvement. It will scarcely be believed that many of the broad, showy streets which came into existence under the patronage of Ludwig I. were laid out and built up without any reference to this first necessity of all thoroughfares. Even the Theresien Strasse has not long rejoiced in a "canal;" and the sewer was laid in that finest part of the Gabelsberger Strasse which runs past the Pinakothek and the Polytechnic School as late as the summer of 1873, while the upper end of the same street, which is notoriously unhealthy, is still unpaved and undrained. The Munich sewers, however, are not so great a boon as one might suppose: indeed, they may be considered as mere receptacles and condensers of the evil substances and odors that would be promiscuously diffused. Owing to a want of knowledge or of skill in their construction there is not sufficient fall to carry away their contents, nor is there any system of flushing to drive out the sediment and cleanse the pipes. Consequently, there is a horrible odor ascending at all times from the open gratings, and frequently the pipes become choked, so as to necessitate the uncovering of the receptacle at a junction, and the taking out and carting away of the hideous slime—an operation which, of course, adds temporary intensity to the usual stench.

Another source of polluted air is the cellars of a great proportion of the houses. Of course the families living in the several flats of each building are all dependent upon one cellar, which is divided off into compartments according to the number of stories in the house. These compartments, however, are in many instances separated from each other by a mere partition of laths or rough boards, so that any want of cleanliness on the part of an individual house-keeper is sure to disturb all her neighbors. Owing to the custom of allowing small shops to be kept in the ground-floor of dwelling-houses there is apt to be a mingling of articles for storage in the cellar such as is neither agreeable nor wholesome. Thus, for instance, a dairywoman will fill the shelves of her compartment with pans of milk: her next neighbor is perhaps a small dealer in wood, coal and turf, and raises a dust accordingly; the greengrocer opposite makes the air damp and bitter with his heaps of neglected vegetables; while the butcher not only has a right to hang up his newly-slaughtered animals and chop his sausage-meat inside of his particular compartment, but may allow a living pig or calf, whose death-hour has not yet arrived, to roam up and down the dark passages, to the increase of the general dirt and discomfort. In this connection it may be well to enter a protest against the Munich regulation, or absence of regulation, which allows every butcher to slaughter pigs, calves and sheep upon his own premises. To say nothing of the shocking sights and sounds which are thereby forced upon the attention of the dwellers in the neighborhood of such shops, it is impossible, considering the defective drainage and insufficient water supply, that the practice should not be of serious injury to the public health. There are also many cellars which are rented out entirely to fruiterers and green-grocers not living in the buildings as a place to store their goods for the winter. In such cases the cellars are apt to remain in a filthy condition, and the smells that pour from the windows are at once a nuisance to passers-by and a source of danger to the inhabitants of the houses. But it is not only the living inhabitants of Munich that are corrupting the heavens above, the earth beneath and the waters under the earth: the dead in their graves are busy at the same work. It is a pity that all thinking persons who still object to the practice of cremation as unnecessary and impious could not be compelled to take up their residence for a while in the neighborhood of the two great cemeteries of Munich: they would not be long in crying out for the adoption of purifying flames and the innoxious columbarium.

The Old (or Southern) Cemetery at the time of its first enclosure was a short distance outside of the city, though not so far as it ought to have been; but by degrees the streets have been extended to its very walls, and property-owners build without hesitation handsome dwelling houses whose windows look directly down upon that field of corruption, piously denominated "God's Acre." The New Cemetery, on the north side of the town, has been in use only five or six years, and was from the beginning but a block or two removed from the nearest houses. The air in the vicinity of the Old Cemetery is so laden with the smell of death that even the natives are aware of it, while strangers generally avoid a second visit. It is a rule that every seven years a portion of the ground occupied by rented graves shall be dug over for new tenants, the partially decayed remains found therein being brought together and buried again in an indiscriminate heap. This method is about as bad as it could be, but the graves that are left undisturbed are not much less harmful to the living. These can be leased for a period of seventy years, the lease to be renewed if desired, but never for a longer term than seventy years without renewal. Whole generations of families are thus buried together, each grave being dug deep enough to hold several coffins one above another, the last one coming to within a few feet of the surface. Now, when one considers the nature of the soil, the closeness of the cemetery to the abodes of the living, the frequency with which the earth is turned over, and the great number of corpses which in a city of the size of Munich must be interred every year, an idea can be formed of the disagreeableness and unhealthiness of the cemeteries. Moreover, bodies are not brought there to be buried at once, but are placed within twelve hours after death in the dead-house, where they are allowed to remain forty-eight hours before burial. This provision, which is in force in most of the cities of Germany, is a wise one in view of the number of families inhabiting a single house: it would seem also to offer additional securities against the horrible fate of being buried alive, though the time allowed is not sufficient to ensure certainty in suspicious cases, and is apt to be infringed upon in seasons of epidemic. But, be that as it may, the continual presence of scores of corpses lying in open coffins, and separated only by glass doors from the hundreds of spectators who come daily to gaze upon the ghastly sight, cannot be otherwise than injurious to the general health. Also, the practice of the citizens using the cemeteries as a favorite promenade, and of spending hours in wandering amongst the graves, is highly pernicious: it would seem as though the people of Munich had fed upon stenches so long that they could not be satisfied with the ordinary smells of the houses and streets, but must seek the fountain-head of corruption to still their morbid craving for the odors of decay. During the height of the cholera epidemic of the winter of 1873-74 an article appeared in one of the newspapers, written by a citizen who signed himself "A Constant Visitor of the Dead-houses;" and the article was answered by an opponent who signed himself "Another Constant Visitor of the Dead-houses;" as though no more worthy occupation could be imagined than this of prowling like ghouls among the victims of the pestilence!

It is now time to speak of another principal cause of the unhealthiness of Munich, perhaps the most important one of all—the water. As before stated, Munich is situated on what was formerly the bed of a lake: the ground, therefore, is full of springs, and from these the water-supply of the inhabitants has always been obtained. There is a well in the court of almost every house, in close proximity to the vault, the refuse-pit and the drain, and well impregnated also, doubtless, with that bugbear of Munich hygienists, "the ground-water." The most ignorant citizen knows that the well-water is not fit to drink, and avoids it as a beverage; still, its use necessarily enters largely into all domestic arrangements. Children are frequently thirsty, and cannot be kept from the pumps and fountains; the poor are not able to afford a constant supply of beer (and, for that matter, the beer itself is made with the same material); it is used in cooking and for washing and bathing; and though its impurities are lessened through boiling, it is so corrupt that nothing short of complete distillation could make it wholesome for either outward or inward application. Strangers are warned against drinking it, and in numerous instances among the citizens bowel complaints and typhus have been traced directly to its poison. It is true that a small portion of the inhabitants are more favored in respect to their water-supply. Within a few years the water of two springs rising a little way out of the city, at Brunnthal and Thalkirchen, has been introduced into a few streets and houses, and, though by no means pure, it is vastly better than that of the wells. But the whole yield from these sources is not sufficient for more than a third of the inhabitants; and the Thalkirchner water has recently been corrupted by the breaking in of the Isar, in consequence of an attempt to enlarge the spring.

But besides the unfavorable nature of the climate and soil of Munich—which cannot be helped—and the shameful condition of its sewerage and water-supply—for which the city government is mainly responsible—there are many accessory causes of disease to be found in the habits and customs of the people. The open-air gatherings of the Germans are, in many respects, a pleasant-and praiseworthy trait of their social life, but the practice needs to be held in judicious restraint to make it safe for the citizens of Munich. The changes of temperature in that region are so frequent and so severe, and the atmosphere at night is so heavily charged with moisture and malaria, that the mere tarrying late in public gardens is dangerous; but when to this source of danger are added the imbibing of copious draughts of ice-cold beer and the eating of suppers of heavy food, such as sausages, roast pork, radishes, etc., it is easy to see how a sudden check of perspiration might react upon a gorged stomach and produce the fevers and inflammation which abound.

Attention has been called to the peculiar soil of Munich as a disadvantageous characteristic of the locality. There is, however, a strip of land following the course of the Isar and bordering the city on the north-eastern side, which is an exception to the general barrenness, it having been gradually formed out of the soil and vegetation brought down the river from more fruitful regions during periods of inundation. It is a low, marshy, heavily-timbered tract, which has been partially drained and laid out as a public park, the so-called English Garden—spot beloved of the people for its welcome shades, where artificial waterfalls, from the "Isar rolling rapidly," add chill to the natural dampness; where unwilling streamlets creep slowly through tortuous channels toward a stagnant pond, and pestiferous miasma, rising like incense at the going down of the sun, broods over the meadows until his rising again. It was in one of the streets bordering this park that the cholera broke out in 1873, and there too, Kaulbach, one of its last victims, had his home. So notorious is the spot as a breeding-place of typhus that it is generally abandoned at sunset; but the same crowd that hurry out of its dripping shades at twilight return in the early summer mornings before the dew has dried on the grass or the poisonous damps have exhaled from the glens and thickets.

So long as the sun is in the sky it is fine weather to a Municher, no matter what wind may blow or what evil the earth may be bringing forth. Thus, on Christmas Day of 1873, when the weather, though unusually mild for the season, was still windy and chilly, and utterly unfit for any open-air enjoyment other than a brisk walk, every beer-garden in the city was filled with an eating and drinking multitude; and this, too, when a cold was especially to be deprecated, as the cholera was increasing every hour. And so on all Sundays and feast-days and fast-days and fairs there is a general pouring out of the population into places of amusement near and remote, no matter what may be the state of the weather or what the condition of the public health.

But, though the people of Munich are extremely fond of staying out of doors, they are by no means lovers of fresh air in their houses. With the dread of fever always before their eyes, they make all close when they go to bed, forgetting that "the only air at night is night air;" and, hardened by habit, they spend long winter evenings in concert-rooms and tavern beer-halls, made stifling with tobacco smoke and foul with accumulated breaths; while at home, especially among the poorer classes, the air is purposely unchanged in order to economize heat. Even the Odeon Music-Hail, the place where aristocratic concerts are given, is so badly constructed with respect to ventilation that when crowded, as it generally is, women frequently faint away, while many persons avoid going there entirely through dread of the discomfort and fear of its effects. So, too, the theatres show a shameful negligence of the health and comfort of the audiences as to this particular, the Royal Theatre especially becoming almost a "Black Hole of Calcutta" by the end of a six hours' Wagner opera. The close air of the crowded lecture-rooms of the Polytechnic School is a source of positive injury to the students, and the same may be said of the halls appropriated to pupils in the Academy of Art.

With respect to bathing, there is no danger of the people of Munich being mistaken for an amphibious race. The tiny bowls and pitchers that furnish an ordinary German washstand, and the absence of slop-pail and foot-bath, are sufficient proof that only partial ablutions are expected to be performed in the bed-chamber; while the lack of a bath-room in even genteel houses, and the smallness and rarity of bathing establishments, show that the practice is by no means frequent or general among the better classes. The fiercest radical who should find himself for a time in the midst of a crowd of the populace would scarcely hesitate (supposing him to be possessed of delicate olfactories) to bestow upon them the epithet of "The Great Unwashed." Indeed, it would be hardly reasonable to expect that people should indulge often in a full bath at home in a city where the water must be drawn from wells, and carried up long flights of stairs in pitchers and pails by women and children.

The notions of the lower classes with regard to dress have doubtless a good deal to do with their health. The same notions prevail in most parts of Germany, but are especially hurtful in a climate so severe and variable as that of Munich. Thus, it is considered improper for a servant-girl to wear a hat or a bonnet in the street when she is about the business of her calling. On Sundays and holidays, indeed, or when she has an outing in the afternoon, she may adorn herself with such an appendage; but to go to market or to the grocer's with her head covered would be a piece of presumption which would at once expose her to ridicule from all the members of her class. Hence, all day and every day women and girls may be seen in the streets without any covering on the head, though, by way of compensation, most of them are obliged to go about a good share of the time with their faces bound up on account of swelled jaws and tonsils, the natural result of such unnatural exposure. Occasionally, in the coldest weather some few, more prudent than the others, wear a hood or a small shawl over the head, but these cases are rare, and excepting in the depth of winter such a precaution is not thought of, although the gusty, chilly weather of spring and autumn and the frequent cold blasts that occur in summer are quite as dangerous, if not prepared for, as are the winter storms. As a general thing, a servant goes out on errands in precisely the same clothes that she wears in the kitchen, and paddles about in rain and snow in the thin, low house-shoes which, on account of their cheapness, are the favorite foot-gear of the ordinary Munich women.

Children, too, are sent to school in the same unprotected manner: one may meet them any day trooping through the streets, their bare heads shining in the sun or glistening in the rain, according as the fickle sky may smile or weep; and babies are drawn about in the open air, two, and sometimes three of them, crowded into a small carriage and sweltering under a feather bed which covers them to their chins, and yet with their bald pates exposed to all the winds that blow. The ignorant recklessness with which the changes of temperature are met is well exemplified in the attire of little girls and young maidens who participate in the religious processions which take place so frequently in Munich, especially during the spring and early summer. On such occasions, although the weather may be so chilly that the bystanders are wrapped up to their eyes in shawls and cloaks, these young creatures appear clad in thin white muslin dresses, with necks and arms bare, and with no covering upon the head more substantial than a wreath of flowers or a gauze veil: and in this condition they march through the wet and windy streets, and settle down finally to a prolonged service in a church as cold and damp as a cellar.

Another source of harm is the ordinary diet of the citizens. There is probably no large city of the Old World where the lower classes are able to obtain so much substantial food as in Munich. Indeed, there is, properly speaking, no abject poverty in that city, although the population, as a whole, possesses less wealth than is usually found in capitals; one reason of this being the fact that many families who are rich enough to choose their place of residence avoid Munich on account of its notorious sickliness, while their places are filled by tradesmen and artisans of all kinds, who must make a living at whatever risk of life. But, at any rate, no one dies there of starvation, and the great majority of the citizens are able to have meat for dinner every day. Unfortunately, veal—and very young veal at that—is the favorite dish of all classes, so that the benefit derived from animal juices is not so great as it might be. During the recent Franco-German war it was remarked that the Bavarian soldiers were able neither to resist nor to endure so well as the troops of North Germany; and by many this difference was ascribed to the habitual use by the former of veal as the chief article of diet. There is no doubt, too, that the immoderate drinking of beer tends to weaken instead of strengthen the inhabitants, especially as so many of them drink when they ought to eat, even beginning a day's work by chilling their stomachs with this cold beverage, and necessitating thereby a supplementary draught of "schnapps," thus creating excitement instead of nourishment, and superinducing a second bad habit upon a first. Pure Bavarian beer, taken in moderation, would be an excellent thing, for its stimulating and nutritive properties are a good counterpoise to the exhausting effects of the harsh climate; but, alas! this renowned specialty of Munich is losing its ancient fame: the beer is no longer under governmental inspection, and bitter is the general complaint against the brewers on account of its alleged adulteration through the use of foreign drugs and poisonous indigenous plants, to say nothing of its dilution by the retailers with Munich water, itself a poison sufficiently strong. For the rest, the amount of pork and sausages consumed is enormous: the favorite vegetable is the indigestible sauerkraut, and the bread in general use is uniformly bad. Nor can tobacco be considered as otherwise than an article of diet, since the men and boys are hardly ever seen without a pipe or cigar in their mouths, while the women and girls spend the greater part of their lives in an atmosphere blue and heavy with tobacco smoke.

Having now given many reasons why the citizens of Munich ought to be sick, it is time to see to what degree effects correspond to causes in the sanitary condition of the city. Munich is known all over the world as a nest for typhus fever; nor will it soon be forgotten that within a year it has suffered from two distinct outbreaks of cholera, besides being the only city in Europe where that epidemic continued to rage during the winter. The population is estimated at one hundred and eighty-eight thousand, but this number is generally considered as greater than the truth. Statistics show that between two and three thousand sicken annually of typhus, and that of these between two and three hundred die. Some idea of the special tendency to this disease may be obtained by comparing the statistics of Munich with those of Berlin, which is also an unfavorably situated and very unhealthy city. In Berlin, the regiment most exposed to fever loses annually three men: in Munich, the first regiment of artillery loses annually thirteen men. In Berlin, of the whole body of the soldiery—over eighteen thousand men—sixteen men die annually of typhus; in Munich, where the number of the soldiers is only twelve thousand, fifty men die annually of typhus. The disease, too, has been on the increase for the last three years. In 1872 four hundred and seven persons died of it, and during the first four months of 1873 one hundred and twenty-two died. Moreover, it must not be forgotten that many persons visiting Munich contract the fever there, but return home to sicken with it, and that this number has greatly increased since the recent facilities for travel have been extended in all directions from the capital. If all these cases were to be added to the list of victims—and they properly belong to it—the number would be appalling indeed. Even that small body, the Bavarian Parliament, loses one or more of its members every year from the same disease and yet these men are more favorably situated than almost any others as regards protective circumstances. So patent is the danger, and so many are the instances of disease contracted during a short stay in the capital and carried away to spread contagion in remote places, that frequently persons chosen to honorable and lucrative official positions refuse to accept because, in order to hold such situations, they must reside temporarily or entirely in Munich. Finally, the general unhealthiness of Munich cannot be questioned, since statistics show that nearly fifty per cent, of the children born there die in infancy, and that the death-rate for the whole population is nearly forty in a thousand.

But is there no help for this state of things? The foregoing account of the principal causes of disease suggests naturally the means of at least partial cure for the accumulated evils under which the benighted city is suffering. It is true that the climate must always be unfavorable to persons of a certain constitution, but its bracing air is a tonic to those who are able to bear it, and its fierce winds serve to sweep away many an impurity. It is true, also, that the soil must always be in some degree a manufactory of injurious effluvia, and that the vicinity of that long strip of marshy bottom known as the English Garden must continue to be a source of mischief; but if the dead had never been buried in the neighborhood of the town, and if the excreta of the living had not from the beginning until how been allowed to corrupt the air and the water, the occasional prevalence of vegetable miasma would give comparatively little trouble. In fact, the extreme backwardness of the people with regard to knowledge of, and obedience to, the simplest sanitary laws is a great aggravation of both their necessary and unnecessary ills. During the recent cholera epidemic the physicians complained that all rational means of abating the plague were continually thwarted by the ignorance and obstinacy of the lower classes. Very few families kept remedies in their houses, and yet in many cases medical aid was not applied for, lest the regulations concerning the disinfection of furniture and the burning of bedding, and other clothing should be enforced. There was the greatest dissatisfaction with the prohibition against the holding of public balls and other amusements wherein health would be particularly exposed; and the foolish citizens crowded all the more into the unventilated, tobacco-poisoned beer-cellars and concert-halls, and persisted in supping on heavy food and cold beer in the open air, as though on purpose to spite the over-anxious magistrates and doctors. Nor was the stupidity confined entirely to the lower classes. People who ought to have known better defied the cholera in excess of rioting, while those of another turn of mind gave way to superstitious fears, and as soon as they felt the first symptoms of the disease fled to the cold, damp churches and wasted in prayer upon their knees the few precious hours which, spent in a warm bed and under the influence of proper remedies, might have ensured them the salvation of at least their temporal life.

To go still higher. Although Munich had warning of the approach of the epidemic months before it broke out, no sufficient means were adopted by the authorities to fortify the city against its attack. All summer long the street-drains sent up their concentrated stenches and the undrained streets spread far and wide their promiscuous abominations. The general daily disinfection ordered by the city government was never thoroughly enforcedly the police, and as often as a lull occurred in the virulence of the pestilence it was almost totally neglected by the citizens. When the plague ceased for a few days in the autumn, the chief medical authorities announced that it was at an end; and when it broke out again, these wise ones comforted the public by assuring them that it was only a "Nach-epidemie"—an after epidemic—that is, a final effort of the mysterious poison, like the last flashing up of an expiring flame. And yet this "after epidemic" lasted more than five months, and was more virulent in its workings than had been the three months' visitation in the previous summer! The official reports and scientific discussions of the subject were unsatisfactory to the last degree. The principal object seemed to be, not to cleanse Munich and get rid of the pestilence, but to substantiate the proposition that the variations in the sanitary condition of the city are intimately connected with the rising and falling of the ground-water (grund-wasser)—a theory which, whether true or not, is of small practical value under existing circumstances, since the ground-water, so far as quality is concerned, is entirely beyond human control, while the drinking-water and the sewers are capable of improvement.

It is but justice to say that a few physicians—who, having recently come to Munich, are properly impressed with its sanitary deficiencies, and one, at least, who, long a resident, has a thorough knowledge of what is wanted, and sufficient common sense and courage to speak out—do not hesitate to declare that the bad water and bad drainage of that city are the principal causes of its everlasting typhus and its frequent epidemics. But these men are in bad odor with their colleagues, and are denounced on all sides as enemies of the fair fame and prosperity of Munich. Certain physicians of high standing there laugh at the fuss made about the water, and tell their patients, even foreigners, to drink all the water they want; while it may be doubted whether any, excepting the few referred to above, have any adequate idea of the injury constantly accruing from the unwashed drains and the crowded cemeteries.

And Munich will be visited with a succession of "after epidemics," and physicians will continue to talk nonsense and make blunders and be at their wits' end, so long as they persist in ignoring the true causes of these plagues and in delaying to apply the only remedy. Water is what Munich needs—pure water for the people to drink and to cook with; plenty of water for them to bathe in; water to wash out the vaults and drains; water for a daily flushing of the sewers. As long ago as 1822 a competent authority pointed out an inexhaustible source from which water might be obtained, with a fall sufficient to obviate the necessity of any hydraulic works for its elevation. There is in the Bavarian Mountains, not far away, a lake of remarkably pure water, situated at such a height that the level would be above the loftiest houses in Munich. The estimated cost of bringing the water into the city is only five millions of gulden (about two millions of dollars). It seems surprising that with this excellent opportunity at hand there should be any hesitation about accepting it. And yet, after having been possessed of the knowledge for more than fifty years, there was only one vote in favor of the enterprise when the subject was discussed in a meeting of the municipal and medical authorities a short time ago. The proverbial thriftiness of the German is apt to degenerate into stinginess when the object to be attained is of general rather than individual benefit; and though Munich claims a high place as an art-centre, it would take a long time to convince its citizens that three hundred millions of kreuzers are but as dust in the balance when weighed against the value to the world of Kaulbach.

One step, however, has been gained. The urgent need of an abundant supply of good water, which is so patent a fact to all strangers visiting Munich, is beginning to dawn upon the intelligence of the community. The connection between cause and effect was so evident during the cholera epidemic of last year that even Ignorance recognized the Law, while Superstition dared only whisper of "judgments," and refrained from attempting to propitiate the destroying angel by religious mummeries until it was certain that his wrath was nearly spent. But it is to be feared that, taking counsel of penuriousness, an attempt will be made to utilize certain sources which have recently been discovered near the city, and which are not only insufficient, but impure, instead of bringing, once for all, a full supply for every purpose from the neighboring mountain lake.

The dragon that haunted the soil of Munich in the old days is still poisoning the springs and the atmosphere with his pestilent breath, nor can he be tempted forth to his destruction until he shall see his reflection mirrored in fountains of pure water.

E.



AMONG THE BLOUSARDS.

When the miserables of the horrible and fascinating old Paris that people used to read about in the works of Eugene Sue and the elder Dumas were drawn into the streets of modern Paris by the ragings of the last revolution, people asked, "Where did these dreadful creatures come from?" Not only did the well-to-do citizen of Paris, who has his habitudes, and never departs from them, and knows nothing outside of them, ask this question, but the American or English tourist who was caught in Paris at the moment asked it. These frightful creatures were not Parisians, surely? Parisians! Why the very word is redolent of ess. bouquet! The well-to-do citizen, sipping his black coffee after dinner in his favorite corner on the Boulevard, explained that they came from the provinces—"Oui, they were provincials, these miserables" And the tourist knew no better than the citizen where the Communist demon came from, with his flaring torch, his red eyes, his flying hair, his hoarse howl, his sturdy tramp, which trampled civilization in the dust, and his reckless spirit, which let loose all the devils of incarnate vice for a mad riot. There are no such creatures as this under the shadow of the Madeleine! We never meet them on the Boulevard des Italiens! They don't live in the Faubourg St. Germain! There are none such in the Champs Elysees, even on Sunday, when, as everybody knows, the lower orders invade the haunts of the better classes—to wit, ourselves, the tourists.

Nevertheless, these very creatures are still in Paris in great numbers. The most elegant tourist who has walked the streets of the French capital this year, though he kept strictly to the choicer quarters, has touched elbows with these creatures unconsciously; and if he has ventured into the Belleville quarter, into the regions beyond the Place of the Bastile, into the neighborhood of the Pantheon or the Gobelins tapestry-mill, he has been jostled against, on the narrow sidewalks of narrow streets, by thousands of them. They are not such a conspicuous feature of the city's daily life now as they were when the volcano of revolution was belching its lava torrent through the streets; but they are there. They are not now occupied in the way they were then; they make less noise; they dress more quietly; they attend, in one way or other, to the business of getting a living. Some are working at trades; some are playing at soldiers; some are keeping cabarets; some are driving fiacres. I am morally certain the rascal who drove me home from the Gymnase one night was a petroleum-flinger at the most active period of his existence. "Give me your ticket, cocher," I said to him; for the law requires the cabman to give to his fare, without solicitation, a, ticket with his number, and the legal rates of fare printed on it. He cracked his whip at the left ear of his steed, and drove on without paying any attention. "Give me your ticket," I repeated. This time he shrugged his shoulders—it requires a really superhuman effort on the part of a Frenchman to refrain from letting his shoulders fly up to his ears, whatever his determination to control himself—but drove on in silence. Then I brandished my umbrella, and punching him with that weapon in the back in an energetic manner, repeated, "Cocher, oblige me with your ticket, tout de suite." He turned round on his seat in a fury. "Ah, ca!" he roared, thee-thou-ing me as an expression of his direst rage and power of insult, "where hast thou come out of, then, that thou hast no sense left thee at the last?" Yes, I am morally certain he helped burn the Tuileries, that fellow!

Others of the former demons who howled in the Commune mobs are now doing the congenial work of thievery which they did before the Commune days, and especially during them. They are not the worst-looking of the demons. A thief is generally a rather sleek-looking person in his station. Rich thieves treat themselves to the best of broadcloth and the shiniest of tall hats. Poor thieves usually at least shave their faces, and try to look unforbidding. If they wear a blouse, it is because they belong on a social scale which does not dream of wearing a coat. The blousard of Paris may be either a thief or a working-man: he is always the one or the other, and sometimes he is both.

The great mass of those who rioted in the Commune—the rank and file of that turbulent army—may be found wherever there are blouses in Paris. Occasionally, arrests are made, even now, of men who were prominently active, unduly noisy, in that terrible time: the French police has got a list of such, and will go on tracking them down and bringing them to punishment for years to come, or until the next revolution arrives. In a most respectable street in the Faubourg St. Germain, where I lived, a quiet wine-seller next door to me was arrested and his business broken up nearly two years after the war was over, his only offence being that he had been too active a Communist. Later, an industrious blousard of my acquaintance was arrested at his work, and sent to prison for the same offence: he was a carriage-maker. In the Rue de Provence an old woman who begged very assiduously with a drugged baby, and whom I used to watch from my window by the half hour, fascinated by her practical methods of doing business, was hauled up one day on the same charge, and went her way with the gendarme, to be seen no more. A meeker-looking old creature I never saw as she leaned against the wall over the way, and collected sous industriously from the passers-by, and hid them in a pocket in the small of the poor baby's back; but I was told she displayed tremendous energy as a petroleuse in those other days when robbery was a better trade than even beggary. You may have observed, when you have been returning home from the opera some night in Paris, in the gloom succeeding midnight, a dusky figure moving along by the paved gutter in the shadow of a large square lantern which he carries. The lantern has a light only in front, and catches your eye as it glides along two or three inches above the paving-stones, so that you see the figure in the shadow behind it but dimly. Close down to the stones it throws its glare for two or three feet about, and into that glare-emerges a hook—an iron hook—which pokes and prods at>out in the gutters, and now and then fastens like a finger on a wisp of paper and disappears behind the lamp. Following the hook with your eye, you see that it deposits the wisps of paper in a deep basket fastened on the back of a man. The is shaggy, dirty and begrimed. He wears a hat which he has at some fished out of a gutter, a ragged blue blouse, a raggeder apron, which was in its brighter days a coffee-sack, and wooden shoes upon his feet. A short pipe, sometimes alight, but more often empty, is in a corner of his mouth. No one needs to be told who he is or what his calling. In the argot of the blousards he is known as the Chevalier of the Hook.

The ragpicker of Paris has been often written of, but what I have read of him has never shown him to me in quite the colors I have found him in by personal observation and inquiry concerning his ways of life. He has been somewhat idealized in print, I find. Victor Hugo has presented him in a light not unlike that of Cooper's noble savage—with large difference of color and pose, of course. The average Frenchman knows Cooper's noble savage as well as we know Hugo's romantic ragpicker, and he knows nothing of the American Indian besides. (It is a curious fact, which I may note in passing, that the only American author whose writings appear to be really well known in Paris to-day is Fenimore Cooper. Next to him stands Edgar Poe—Poaye, as the French call him, pronouncing both the vowels.) There is a street in the crowded quarter of Paris back of the Pantheon which has the, reputation of being the especial haunt of the ragpickers. It is called the Rue Mouffetard, and includes many of this class of blousards among its population; but as there are over twenty thousand ragpickers in Paris, it needs little argument to show that they are not all hived in the Rue Mouffetard. Great numbers live in the Brise Miche quarter, behind the church of St. Mery; at Montmartre, along the Canal de Bievre; in the purlieus of Belleville; out beyond the Bastile; in fact, wherever there is dirt enough to suit their tastes. For if the truth is to be written here, it must be said that the ragpicker of Paris is the most degraded creature ever met in the guise of a human being. I have met Digger Indians, too, in California. There is something to be said in defence of the bestiality of a Digger: he has not been exposed to the refining influences of surrounding civilization; he was reared in darkness and ignorance; so were his fathers before him for many generations; the white man and his ways have just dawned upon the poor Digger's consciousness; and so on. These things cannot be said for the ragpicker of Paris. He is almost equally dirty with the Digger, and he lives in the gayest capital of the world. He is also almost equally ignorant with the Digger: neither can read or write; neither has any idea whether the world is round or flat; neither is aware, save dimly, that there are other lands and other peoples than his own; but the ragpicker is in a city full of books and newspapers (and, oddly enough, is a principal purveyor for the mills that make paper for printing); and the Digger has the advantage in the comparison. The Digger lives in vicious sexual relations, but in this particular point the comparison leaves the Indian far in advance of his rival, for the ragpicker's customs in this regard are worse by far than those of even the most degraded Indians of America. There is nothing in any savage country more horrible, more astounding and incredible than the practices of the ragpickers of Paris in respect of the relations between the sexes. They are so atrociously vile that it is difficult to state the truth in cleanly words.

You may have heard that a ragpicker who has risen to the rank of a boss in his trade, and so remains at home in a shop and goes out with his hook no more, is called an ogre. A woman attaining this dignity is called an ogress. The terms are not idle ones. Like many of the words and phrases of slang they are based on the clearest conception of the merits of the case. An ogre or ogress without a daughter, real or adopted, lacks the first requisite for doing a successful business. The ogre or ogress has his or her especial workmen, who go out and scour the streets, bringing home their load, and being paid in board and lodging simply. When there is a daughter in the business the workmen are her husbands. The process of divorce is easy, and consists simply in the ragpicker's returning with his hotte (la hotte is the basket which hangs on the back) to some other ogre or ogress after his daily or nightly tour of the streets. Marriage among the ragpickers of Paris is so rare an incident as to be virtually no part of their plan of life.

The Paris ragpicker is seldom seen in the streets by day: his most profitable season is the night. And what meagre pickings are his at the best! what despicable bits of paper, of twine, of coal-refuse, of rejected food, bones, potato-skins, he gathers carefully in his hoard! A bit of paper no larger than a postage-stamp he saves. A crust of bread no bigger than a walnut is a prize, for rare are the households in Paris in which a crust that is large enough to be visible to the naked eye is allowed to be thrown into the street. Standing and watching this poor wretch prodding in a gutter after hopeless infinitesimals, I have pictured to myself what emotions would surge through his breast if a New York garbage-barrel were to be set down before him. I am not sure he would be able to refrain from fainting away at sight of such a mine of wealth. Happy ragpicker of New York who takes his morning stroll and his lordly pick from the contents of the teeming barrels our servants set out on the pavement for him! He does not have to work at night: he is a sort of prince, compared to his Paris fellow. If a Paris ragpicker could have the monopoly of the barrels in a single block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, I am convinced he would retire from business at the end of ten years with an independent fortune—that is, if with the New York barrels he could have the Paris market and live on Paris fare. It is an old story that in Paris nothing is wasted. The very mud in the streets is gathered up and sold. There is a market for everything.

An important division of the army of blousards is that composed of the street-sweepers of Paris. They share the Rue Mouffetard and the Place Maubert with the ragpickers, and, like them, are scattered about in various poorer quarters of the city. Ever-picturesque argot has given them a name of ridicule, and calls them les peintres and their brooms their inspired brushes. Every tourist has seen those unhappy wretches at work, sometimes alone, sometimes in gangs of three or four, men and women together. There is no distinction of sex in this branch of industry, as indeed there is in none of the lowest fields of labor in Paris. Women and girls are quite often ragpickers; among the street-sweepers they form a good half of the force; they are also street—peddlers, dragging cartloads of vegetables about and crying aloud their wares; they are porters, lugging bundles on their backs; they are oyster-openers, hacking away with iron knife at coarse shells; they even drive drays and big market-wagons; they split wood and shovel coal, and in a hundred ways confound and confuse those theorizers who pretend that male bone and muscle is by nature brawnier than female. The female scavengers are quite as strong, quite as coarse, quite as dirty, and can smoke their pipes with quite as much gusto as their male compeers.

The scavengers are six thousand in number, and are employed by contractors, who pay them at the rate of four to eight sous per hour. They use up seventy thousand brooms a year, and the filth they gather is rotted in pits and sold for manure, yielding about seven hundred thousand dollars a year. Until the rubbish of New York streets is made to yield a profit in a similar manner our streets will never be cleaned as they should be. But I fear it is hopeless to expect that New York streets will ever be cleaned as they are in Paris, from lack of the human element that does the work in the French capital. A hard ten hours' work would yield the Paris scavenger forty to eighty sous, and on this sum he would be rich, for he can clothe and feed himself on a sum which would scarcely buy a New York laborer what drink he needs alone, to say nothing about food and clothing. But the Paris scavenger is rarely privileged to work ten hours a day, and his earnings the year round will barely exceed on an average twenty-five cents a day. For this sum he can have sufficient food, and as for clothing, it is hardly an exaggeration to say that he never buys any. At various stages in his career he becomes possessed by a stroke of fortune of some article of cast-off clothing, which he wears, as it were, for life. Ordinarily, the poorest blousard has a new blouse once in five or ten years, and a new pair of wooden shoes in the same time; but the scavenger's apparel is for ever old, and he never lays it off. I have seen thousands of men and women in Paris of whom it would be mere idle dreaming to suppose that they undressed themselves at night. Their clothing was practically as much a part of them as their skins. It is only in the matter of lodging that the lowest classes of Paris are hard pressed. Rents in Paris are high. Few families, even of the better sort of blousards, have a home attractive enough to compete with the fascinations of the street or the cafe. Even in the Rue Mouffetard there are cafes where wine is sold at two sous the glass, and even cheaper, which would put to the blush some of the most frequented "saloons" of Broadway in point of elegance and comfort for the lounger. Stuccoed walls, frescoed ceilings, huge mirrors, velvet sofas, marble-topped tables, gleaming chandeliers, gilt and glitter that would be called "palatial" in New York, make the place attractive. Yet a man could hardly be too ragged to be welcome therein if he had a few sous in his pocket.

The scavenger and the ragpicker, being the lowest grade of blousards, do not always rise to the dignity even of a blouse. They wear a coat sometimes, but it is a marvel of a coat, and was in the last stages of tottering old age before it fell to the blousard. They wear leather boots too sometimes, instead of the wooden shoes belonging to their station, but they are boots which are but a mockery and a delusion, and yield the wearer no comfort. A respectable blousard—a carpenter or a shoemaker or a member of any honest trade—would scorn to be seen in any other dress but his neat blouse, unless on some great day, a fete, his wedding or at church, when he wears his only coat, or his father's or a friend's. The blouse is in its sphere a badge of respectability to the wearer, and honest blousards look upon the assumption of a blouse by a thief as a gross imposition upon the public at large and an outrage upon honest workingmen. There is a wide range of quality in blouses, too. I bought one in the Rue Mouffetard, to wear as a protection in some of my night-wanderings, for the sum of forty cents: it was a plain frock of coarse stuff, with a string at the neck. But there were blouses of several degrees of fineness in the shop—some of very fine linen, tied with a white silk ribbon, and neatly embroidered. The usual color of blouses is white, blue or black. The material is often a coarse, warm cloth, such as one might make a very respectable overcoat of, I should think. In cold weather it is common to see men wearing two or even three blouses, one over the other. Caps are sold at from twenty to sixty cents each in the same street. It will be seen that clothing is inexpensive to the blousard, and as the fashions never change with him, he never lays aside a garment till it is quite worn out.

One of the peculiar features of low Paris is the shop for the sale of articles at the uniform price of one son. One before which I paused in the Rue Mouffetard was presided over, by two women—evidently grandmother and granddaughter. The former was as grotesque a type of the jolly old vendeuse of Paris as it would be possible to find. A low, winey humor twinkled in her little black eyes, hidden in wrinkly wads of fat; her nose glowed with good feeling; her toothless mouth smirked good-naturedly. A worn shawl covered her chunky shoulders, and a cap like a muslin and flannel extinguisher protected her bald old head from the weather. The granddaughter, being young and rather pretty, was less interesting as a picture of a curious type. The shop occupied a corner, and seemed to literally overflow upon the sidewalks of the two streets, so that care was needful in moving about to avoid stumbling over the profuse array of objects which littered the way. A group of old women were standing near, laughing and chattering in toothless merriment over some mysterious cause of amusement, which I grievously suspected to be myself, the apparition of a foreigner being no doubt an uncommon one in that quarter. But the women of the shop, having an eye to sales, were obsequiously polite to the stranger. I engaged in conversation with the old woman, who proved quite communicative, and set me off on a path of inquiry which yielded information of curious interest.

"Voyez!" cried out the younger woman from behind the broad counter open to the street, and spread with a literally innumerable variety of articles—"Voyez! All one sou! your choice in the sale!"

To study the shop was to find many suggestions of the types of people living in the surrounding buildings—alphabets and whistles for children; playing-cards for gamesters; camphor cigarettes for invalids; sewing-cases for work-girls; mirrors for coquettes; and toys innumerable, "all one sou." In the grand shops on the fashionable boulevards you may see the last new mode in toys—for no season goes by in Paris without bringing some especial toy or toys to become "the rage"—but in the Rue Mouffetard the toys are all classics. They have been handed down from generation to generation precisely in the forms you see them here. Babies who are now tottering grandfathers and grandmothers played with the toys of the "boutique a un sou" in their day, as the babies of the present do, and paid the same price for them, in spite of the changes of time and the decreased purchasing value of the son in most respects. I bought a large collection of these toys purely as objects of curiosity, and it was really amazing to see, when spread out on a table, what a collection I had gathered for the incredible price of sixteen cents. Many of the toys would be readily recognized as old acquaintances in America, but others, common here for a hundred years past, I never saw at home. The articulated monkey chasing his nose over the end of a stick; the wooden snake undulating in a surprisingly life-like manner; the noisy "watchman's rattle," which in our village was popularly supposed to be the constant companion of the New York policeman on his beat; the jumping-jack, the wooden sword, the whip and the doll,—all these are household friends in the humblest American homes. But not so the frog which jumps with a spring, the wooden hammers which fall alternately on their wooden anvil by the simplest of contrivances, and the horseman without legs, whose horse has a whistle instead of a tail. How any one of these articles could be sold for a sou passed my comprehension until I learned details so surprising as to throw this one quite into the shade.

There are blousards whose whole lives are passed in carving these toys from the wood of the linden tree, and daubing them with the most flaming reds, the most glittering yellows, the most dazzling blues, that ever colorist beheld. The toy whips with handles decorated with gilt paper wrapped about them spirally are said to be exclusively made by Israelites, but the ingenuity of the human mind has not devised an explanation of this curious fact. The papier-mache sheep is one of the most elaborately fashioned toys sold for a sou, and the mode of making it is this: The workman takes old scraps of paper and mashes them in water to a pulp: this he sticks around the inside of a rude mould, which is in two parts, one for each side of the sheep. When the two sides are moulded, he sticks them together and dips the whole in a pot of white mucilaginous paint. When this coating is dry, he tattoos the sheep according to his fancy, covers its back with a bit of sheepskin, and ties a red string around its neck. And all this work for a sou? is one's incredulous question. Why, our blousard would think his fortune was made if he could get a sou for it. The retailer in the Rue Mouffetard sells it for a sou: the man who made it would be happy if he could sell it at the rate of eight sous the dozen, but, like most other workers, he must deal with a middleman. No retailer could take his stock off his hands in sufficient quantities: he must sell to a wholesale dealer in the first place, and the wholesale dealer sells to the little shopkeeper at eight sous the dozen. All this work for half a sou, then! And when it is added that the workman has to furnish the materials for his work besides, it really entitles the toy to a niche in the realms of the marvelous. I have found my eyes growing moist in New York as I listened to the tales of sewing-girls who made coarse shirts at six cents apiece, and found the thread, but such cases were exceptional, and could only be viewed in the light of intolerable hardships; while the poor wretches who make these toys at these prices are following the trade to which they were bred, and which their fathers followed before them, and their only fear is that they may be unable to get enough of this work to do. Each of the other toys in my collection is made at the same or a smaller price. The little lead candlestick is sold by the wholesale dealer at four sous the dozen. Whistles are sold at two sous the dozen. There are little watches of stamped brass with a crystal, movable hands, and a cord of yellow cotton with an occasional gold thread running through it, which are sold wholesale at seven sous the dozen.

"Voyez! Make your choice, brave parents! If the little one pulls in pieces the object of his affection, no matter: it will not derange your resources to replace it."

Courier, in the preface to his translation of Herodotus, tells us that Malherbe, the courtier, used to say, "I learn all my French at the Place Maubert," and that Plato, who was a poet and did not like the lower orders, nevertheless called them his "masters of language." The gamin of Paris, who is the father of argot, long ago gave to the quarter of the city through which the Rue Mouffetard runs a name which clings to it tenaciously. He called it the "quartier souffrant"—the suffering quarter. A designation like this, given by a magazinist, would be fitting enough, certainly, but received into the current slang of Paris, it becomes a really striking phrase. It is nothing to read of a suffering quarter, but it is almost startling to hear an omnibus conductor call out, "Place Maubert! Rue St. Victor! Pantheon! Quartier Souffrant! Anybody for the Suffering Quarter?" and to see a rheumatic old woman, tottering with years and clad in dirty rags, get down and go clattering off into the quarter to which she so palpably belongs.

The Rue Mouffetard, which in old times was a continuation of the Place Maubert from the river Seine, then extended in an unbroken line to the Barriere d'Italie, at the remote southern limit of the city of Paris. The Haussmannizing reform which set in under the Empire went at the horrible neighborhood with a sort of sublime fury of destruction. Whole blocks of dark, forbidding buildings were obliterated by the pickaxes of the blousards, who thus assisted at their own regeneration. The result is, that there is a long and wide avenue now stretching its lines of lamps into the distance from the point where the Rue Mouffetard stops and the Avenue Gobelins begins. The old street—the portion of it which remains—looks with a dazed and dirty sorrowfulness up the broad, clean avenue which once was dirty and narrow like itself. The work of transformation ceased with the breaking out of the war with Germany. So did the like work in numerous other quarters of the town which needed it quite as badly as the Rue Mouffetard. But under the government of the Septennat the work has been resumed in some degree. The double purpose is hereby served of letting in light on the dark spots of the town, and of giving employment to the needy blousards, who might get into obstreperous moods again if crowded too hard by poverty and want. It seems at first sight an awful destruction of property, this work of demolition, but I believe it has been proved that the rise in value of the real estate thus regenerated more than compensates for the losses sustained, in the long run. All the blousard cares about the matter, however, is that it gives him work, and that is what he craves.

To see gangs of brawny fellows tearing down walls, ripping off doors, carrying away timbers on their shoulders when a street is in its decaying stage, is to see a most interesting sight. At the entrance of the street a sign is put up: "RUE BARREE." The front walls of buildings torn away, winding staircases are seen climbing up with all their burden of years upon them and all their secret weaknesses exposed. Sometimes these stairways are of stone, sometimes of wood: when the latter, if in a fair state of preservation, they are taken away bodily, to be put up again in some remote quarter of the town. Shop-windows are offered for sale for like purposes. At night the scene is made lurid by the glare of triangular lanterns, which throw out their warning red light, and the entrance to the street is carefully guarded. Gradually the old buildings are taken to pieces and removed, bit by bit. New walls of creamy stone, with modern windows, handsomely carved cornices, stone piazzas, and the like, are built up. The street has become widened where it was narrow, and straightened where it was crooked. The very sidewalks on either side of the new boulevard or avenue are as wide as was the whole of the old street which has now disappeared. And with the old street the old tenants have disappeared too. Handsome shops occupy the ground-floors, wealthy citizens live in the richly adorned apartments on the upper floors. The blousards who hived in the old street have found a nook in some other old street, or they have fled to the suburbs—the best place for them, as it is for all people of limited resources in all large towns.