Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/169

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166
WIESBADEN.

charming face appeared at the door with the announcement, "On l'a trouvée, mademoiselle" (It is found!), and he reiterated, with a just burgher pride, "rarely is anything lost at Wiesbaden." The bag, he says, was found by a "writer" and left with the police, and Leisring, the writer, and the police, all decline compensation or reward. If this abstemiousness had occurred in our country, we might, perhaps, have thought it peculiar to it




I went last evening with the girls to a ball given every week to such as choose to attend it; I went, notwithstanding Mr. ——'s assurance (with a horror not quite fitting an American) that we should meet "Tom, Dick, and Harry there." One of the girls replied that "Tom, Dick, and Harry were such very well-behaved people here, that there was no objection to meeting them;" and so, fortified by the approbation of our English friends Miss —— and Miss ——, who are sufficiently fastidious, we went. The company assembled in the grand saloon of the Kur-Saal at the indefinite hour at which our evening lectures are appointed, "early candle-lighting," and it was rather miscellaneous, some in full, some in half dress. The girls had been told it was customary to dance, when asked, without waiting for the formality of an introduction, and they were only too happy to obtain their favourite exercise by a courteous conformity to the customs of the country. They had partners, and very nice ones, in plenty. I