upon me.  He recommends me to an underling, and bustles off to guests more important.  There are in the dining-hall French, German, Italian, English and Japanese.  Tongues, plates, knives and forks clatter inside—­wheels roll, rumble and clatter over the stony pavement outside.  I wait for my soup.  Hours seem to lag by.  I appeal in vain to other waiters.  Life is too busy and important a matter with them to pay any attention to me.

The aristocratic German waiter is cool and indifferent.  It is beneath his dignity to approach you within half an hour after you sit down.  He knows you are hungry, and enjoys your pangs.  He is sensible of every signal, every expression of the eye with which you regard him.  To appear not to know is the chief business of his life.  He will with the minutest care arrange a napkin while a half dozen hungry men at different tables are trying to arrest his attention.  Before I met this man my temper was mild and amiable:  I believed in doing by my fellows as I would be done by.  Now I am changed.  I never visit the Vienna restaurant but I dwell in thought on battle, murder, pistols, bowie-knives, blood, bullets and sudden death.  After eating a meal it requires another hour to pay for it.  A nobleman, dressed de rigueur, condescends to take my money after he has made me wait long enough.  There are two of these officials at the hotel.  One in general manner resembles a heavy dealer in bonds and government securities—­the other a modest, charming young clergyman of the Church of England.  One morning, when the atmosphere was very sultry, I ventured to open a window.  The dealer in government securities shut it immediately, and gave me a look which humiliated me for the day.  I said I wanted, if possible, air enough to support life while eating my breakfast.  He said that was against the rules of the house:  the windows must not be opened.  There was too much dust blowing in the street.  What were a few common lives compared to the advent of dust in that dining-room?

You must live here by rule.  Novelty is treason.  It is the unalterable rule of life that because things have been done in a certain manner, so must they ever be done.  It requires almost a revolution to have an egg boiled hard in Vienna.  I said at my first meal, “Ein caffee und egg mit hard.”  It may be seen that I speak German with the English accent.  The eggs came soft-boiled.  I suppose that the nobleman who attended on my table went to the prince in disguise who governed the culinary department, and informed him of this new demand in the matter of eggs.  It is presumable that the prince pronounced against me, for next morning my eggs were still soft-boiled.  Then I braced myself up and said, “See here!  I want mine zwei eggs, you know, hard, hard!  You understand?” The nobleman looked at me with contempt.  The eggs came about one-tenth of a degree harder than the previous morning.  I resolved to gain my point.  I saw how necessary it was to put more force, vigor, spirit and savagery into my culinary instructions to the nobleman.  This despotism should not prevail against me.  When the free, easy and enlightened American among the effete and crumbling monarchies of Europe shrieks for hard-boiled eggs, they must be produced, though the House of Hapsburg should reel, stumble and totter.