Before I made my tour of inspection I was ushered into the presence of the supervisor—a sad, thin man in a flapping black coat who had the nervous cough of an undertaker. He explained that the season being Christmas he was very busy. Trade was brisk; everyone in Vienna had something to sell. This may strike you as quaint, but in Vienna nowadays Christmas is celebrated by pawning and not by purchasing. Because of this the supervisor asked to be excused from conducting me personally over his mausoleum. He entrusted me to a gray, unshaven man who had the appearance of a broken Count. He may have been a Count. An Admiral, who was the hope of the Adriatic navy, is banging at a typewriter today. This morning I shook the hand of a General, earning ten dollars a month, who once made the Allies tremble by his prowess against the Russians. You can never be quite sure of your companion in this fallen city of tragic transformations. The first room we entered was jammed to the ceiling with everything from the cheapest electric fittings to the loot of palaces. I noticed a complete set of Empire drawing-room furniture marked at the absurd price of a thousand crowns—rather less than a dollar and a half. There were rare rugs on the walls—the kind one would purchase at Sloane's for anything above three thousand dollars; they were offered at from three to sixty dollars. The sixty dollar one was a magnificent specimen. In another room there was an art gallery, guarded by an ex-engineer of European reputation, who now survives chiefly on tips. The pictures which he guarded were all for sale and many of them the work of famous modern painters. The cheapest I saw was a signed Russian landscape; it would have cost me thirty cents. The dearest, frame and all, could have been mine for six dollars. Art is not much in demand in Vienna. But the more pathetic sight was not the luxuries of the rich, but the necessities of the respectable middle-class, which had been left unredeemed for three months and were now to be auctioned off. The price on the tags represented one-third their value, which had been advanced to their owners, plus a margin of interest on the Government's outlay. Here were dresses, millinery, fur coats, gramophones, silver wedding-presents, libraries and even cradles. There was nothing you can think of that goes to make a home that some unfortunate had not pledged and lost. The Count touched my arm. Wouldn't I like to see how it was done? How what was done? Why, the pledging.