It was an undertaking to travel in Germany in those days. The German railway officials spoke nothing but German and, furthermore, they are never adaptable and quick like the Italians. In France or Italy they understood you whether you spoke their language or not; but a Teuton has to have everything translated into his own untranslatable tongue. When my mother had finally gathered together my costumes, she wrote out a long document that she had translated into German, concerning all that Eliza was to do, and where she was to go, and gave it to her so that she could produce it along the way and be passed on to the next official without explanation or complication. And after this fashion Eliza and my costumes reached me safely. She was a good traveller and a good maid. She was also very popular in that part of the world. Negroes had no particular stigma attached to them on the Continent. Many of them were no darker of hue than the Hindu and Mohammedan royalties who journeyed there occasionally. So, wherever we went, my good, dark-skinned Eliza was a real belle. There was much to interest me in Vienna, not only as a foreign capital of note, but also as a curiosity. In a long life, and after many and diverse experiences, I never had been in a city so entirely bound up in its own interests and traditions. The luckless sinner battering vainly upon the gates of Heaven has a better fighting chance, all told, than has the ambitious outsider who aspires to social recognition by the Viennese aristocracy. If an American is ever heard to say that he or she has been received by Viennese society, those hearing the speech may laugh in their sleeve and wonder what society it was. The thing cannot be done. A handle to one's name, an estate, all the little earmarks of "nobility" are not only required but insisted on. I believe it to be a safe statement to make that no one without a title, and a title recognised by the Austrians as one of distinction, can be received into the inner circle. Even diplomatic representatives of republics are not exempt from this ruling. They may have the wealth of the Indies, and their wives may possess the beauty of Helen herself, and yet they are not admitted. For this reason Austria is a most difficult post for republican legations. Republican representatives do not stay there long. Usually, the report is that they are recalled for diplomatic reasons, or their health has failed, or some other pride-saving excuse to satisfy a democratic populace. Vienna was, and I suppose is, the dullest Court in the whole world. The German Court at one time had the distinction of being the dullest, but that has looked up a bit during the reign of the present Kaiser. But Austria! The society of Vienna has absolutely no interest in anything or anybody outside its own sacred Inner Circle.