That Sommerfest will be remembered by all who were there, and sadly by more than one respectable head of a family.
Another night there was a festival in the grounds around the Exposition building. I started for that place leisurely about five o’clock, under agreement to meet a friend near the west portal, and mounted to the deck of an omnibus which bore numbering about five hundred voices. Then there were electric lights, nearly a dozen of them, that made the spot brilliant, and when all their rays were thrown on the great dome they brought it out into bold relief.
“How magnificent that dome appears,” said an American near me to his friend; “you can see every part of it distinctly.”
“That may be,” said the other; “but you could see it a great deal better in the daytime without paying a cent.”
Bless his practical mind! I never thought of that!
The light had a strange appearance when thrown on the trees and buildings and fountains, and the scene reminded me of representations of fairyland, such as we sec in the Black Crook, or in the panorama of the Pilgrim’s Progress. If some of my theatrical friends could have been there, I think they would have found some new hints for stage effects. The jewels in the great crown that surmounts the dome were sparkling very brilliantly, and I imagine that more than one individual in the crowd thought that the crown would be a nice thing to plunder. The effect of the lights when turned from you was very pleasing, but when you had to look one of them in the face it became a nuisance. They had a way of changing the colors of the lights that reflected upon the fountains so that they became by turns red, blue, green, yellow, and white, eliciting a great many murmurs of applause.
By half past nine the people began to move away, and there was a jam on all the streets that led through the Prater up to the Praterstern. Vehicles could only proceed at a walk, and even that pace could not always be maintained. I was on the top of an omnibus, and rarely have I seen so large a crowd as the one I looked upon from my post of observation. The streets from the Praterstern spread out like the arms of a fan, or more like the spokes of a wheel, and on all these streets people were about as much crowded as they could be, and there was a much larger sprinkling of women than you see in a crowd in America. Vehicles were moving as best they could, and despite the rush and the jam everybody was good natured.
Nearly up to midnight the crowd surged along from the Prater, and evidently people were in no hurry to go to bed. All Vienna seemed to be out of doors, and the beer-halls were doing an enormous business. I would not ask for a better fortune than to have a dollar for each glass of beer drank in Vienna in the twenty-four hours ending the next morning at sunrise. There were probably half a million people drinking beer on that festive day, at an average of ten glasses each.
As an illustration of European customs, I will relate an incident of my stay in Vienna:
One day, three American ladies were in the Exposition building, and attracted the attention of a couple of strangers, one an Austrian officer, and the other a Russian of considerable distinction in his own home. The freedom of their manners, so natural to American women, was misinterpreted, and the gentlemen made themselves obnoxious by following them wherever they went, and, finally, by speaking to them, and offering to be their escort.