amid the crowd in the bright foreground of the scene found herself enjoying solitude _à deux_ before she had time to become alarmed or think what mamma would say. Then it had still the gorgeous halls, the ball-rooms, the concert-rooms, the promenading-rooms, with their gilding and velvet and satin furniture, which had been created by a wave of the wand of the great enchanter who presided at the green table. Why should not all these good things be turned to the service of virtue instead of vice? Why should not respectability and morality inherit the legacy of departed wickedness? Why should not good and virtuous German Fraüleins, with their pale blue eyes and pale blond hair, do their innocent flirting amid the bowers where the Parisian demi-monde had outraged the chaste wood-nymphs by its uncongenial presence? The loathsome patchouli savor of the denizens of the Boulevard would hardly resist the purifying breezes of one Black Forest winter. The notice to quit served on Mammon would be equally efficacious as regarded the whole of his crew. The whole valley would be swept clean of them, and sweetened and restored to the lovers of Nature in her most delicious aspect. Baden, emerging from the cold plunge-bath of its first dismay, determined that it should be so. The hotel-keepers, the lodging-house-keepers, the livery-stable-keepers, the purveyors of all kinds, screwed their courage to the sticking-place and determined to go in for virtue, early hours and moderate prices. Well, yes! moderate prices! This was the severest cut of all. But there was no help for it. Virtue does prefer moderate prices. There could be no more of that reckless scattering of gold, no more of that sublime indifference to the figure at the foot of the bill, which characterized their former customers. What mattered a napoleon or so more or less in their daily expense to him or her whose every evening around the green table left them some thousands of francs richer or poorer than the morning had found them? There can be no doubt, I fear, that Baden would have much preferred a continuance in its old ways. But the choice was not permitted to it. It is therefore making a virtue of necessity, and striving to live under the new régime as best it may. And I am disposed to think that better days may yet be in store for it. At present, the preponderating majority of the visitors are Germans. There are naturally no French, who heretofore formed the majority of the summer population. There are hardly any Americans, and very few English. Those of the class which used to find Baden delightful find it, or conceive that they would find it, so no more. And English and Americans of a different sort seem to have hardly yet become aware that they would find there a very different state of things from that which they have been accustomed to associate in idea with the name of the place. It must be supposed, however, that they will shortly do so.