You couldn’t move without hitting a dignitary in official costume, or a fellow so full of dignity in plain clothes that you would recognize him at once as a heavy swell; and the mingling of the nationalities as the evening wore on was funny to behold.
Germans and Russians, and others of the continental people were hugging each other, and you had the spectacle—curious and novel to an American—of bearded men kissing and re-kissing like couples of school-girls.
They swore eternal friendship, and pledged each other till their hearts and heads were too full and their tongues too thick for utterance. The waiters got drunk, owing to the numbers of “heel-taps” and the general abundance and freedom of the champagne. They got into rows among themselves and with some of the guests, and altogether there were half a dozen scrimmages of greater or less magnitude. Most of them were fortunately confined to words, and were soon quelled, but there were two rows in which there was some pushing, but no actual blows.
One American had his vest torn in a scuffle with a waiter. He went next morning to the consulate, bearing the torn garment as proof of the affray; but as he could not tell how the affair occurred, and could not remember the name and face of the waiter who assaulted him, the Consul declined to make the quarrel a national one.
It was long after midnight when the last of the convives went home; and when the sun rose next morning, Vienna contained an unwonted number of heads swollen to unusual size and bursting with the pain of too much drink the night before.
The words “West Portal” in very large letters. Man proposes and the police dispose. The police turned us off at one of the bridges, and would not allow us to go anywhere near the western entrance, but sent us away in the direction of the south portal. Then another lot of police stopped us a quarter of a mile from the gate, so that my ride to the Exposition was more in theory than in practice.
Vehicles of every description were depositing people at the gates, and thousands were going thither on foot. Many had come expecting to spend an hour in the building before the beginning of the fête, but in this they were disappointed, as the doors were closed at six o’clock, instead of seven, the usual hour. The crowd kept coming, and coming; you couldn’t find a vacant chair at any of the restaurants and beer halls, and you found it no easy matter to walk about. I think that by eight o’clock there were not less than a hundred thousand people in the grounds, and they kept coming as late as nine o’clock. As a fête, strictly speaking, the affair did not amount to much. Half a dozen bands of music were playing in various parts of the grounds, and at the spot known as the Mozart Platz, there was an Austrian singing-society.