Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 169 by Various Authors
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an American lady, and I should prize above all things some knowledge of her. I hope I may have the honor--" A blast from the engine broke upon his speech at that juncture: we were at Baden.
Hastily thanking him--for abroad one falls into the continental habit of thanking people "mille fois" for what they do not do, as for what they do do--and saying "Bon jour," I hurried off to the Bergstrasse. The next morning I refunded my borrowed guldens to the master of the café by post (as I had not placed my entire bank in my purse), and feeling conscience-smitten at having, in my direst extremity, been befriended by one of those "dreadful Austrians" whom I had so bitterly berated, I hinted my amazement, along with my thanks, at having been the recipient of so graceful and needed a courtesy from a Viennese. He acknowledged the receipt of the money, adding, "I hope you do not take me for a Viennese: I am a Bavarian, and have lived twelve years in England."
Among the occupants of the house and dwellers in the garden where I lodged and lived was a young Austrian woman, two years married, with whom I formed a pleasant acquaintance, and whose chatty ways rapidly revived my knowledge of the German, in which language only she could express herself. I shall not soon forget her, for she told me that she married to please the "Eltern"--that she "had never loved," and was so naïve in her mode of reasoning as to prove a source of infinite surprise. She had no conception of any destiny for a girl but that of marriage, and never tired of asking about "American girls," whom I described as oftentimes living and dying unmarried.
"And do not the parents force them to marry? And what do they do if not marry? And when they get old, what becomes of them? And they are doctors even? Did you ever see a woman-doctor?" etc., etc., and hundreds of similar questions.
One evening, two or three days after the "robbery," we went to sit in the park and listen to the music. On the end of a bench where we s