Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/161

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our wants, ran across the street with us, and in five minutes we had made a bargain with a man whose honest German face is as good security as bond and mortgage. We have a very nice parlour and three comfortable rooms for thirty-five florins a week—about fourteen dollars. We pay a franc each for breakfast, for tea the same, and we have delicious bread, good butter, and fresh eggs; for our dinners, we go, according to the custom here, to the table d'hôte of a hotel. We could not get as good accommodations as these in a country town at home for the same money, nor for double the sum at a watering-place.




My Dear C.,

Sunday evening.—We have been here now more than a week, and, with true traveller's conceit, I am sitting down to give you an account of the place and its doings. Wiesbaden (Meadow-baths) is the capital of the duchy of Nassau, about two miles from the Rhine. It is a very old German town, and was resorted to by the Romans. It may be called the ducal residence, as the duke, in natural deference to his fair young wife's preference, now resides here a good portion of the time, and is building a large palace for the duchess.

Wiebaden has more visiters than any of the numerous German bathing-places. The number amounts to from twelve to fifteen thousand annually, and this concourse is occasioned by the unrivalled refutation of its mineral-water At six this morn-