Page:McClure's Magazine volume 10.djvu/19



ARLSBAD in winter-time is about as bleak and desolate as a Western town which, after a hard fight with weekly papers and Winchesters, has lost the county-seat. The place is not dead: no more than the flowers are dead that are sleeping under the snow that has drifted deep in the BÖhmerwald. With the first bluebird comes the man burdened with a bad liver, and the first patient is followed closely by merchants and shop-keepers, hotel men, and waiters. There are merchant-tailors from Vienna, china merchants from Dresden, and clockmakers from Switzerland.

All through the month of April the signs of life are daily increasing. The walks that wind about the many hills are being swept clean of dead leaves; houses are repainted; and the rooms of hundreds of hotels and pensions are thrown open to admit the health-giving winds that come down from the low mountains laden with the scent of pine. The streets are reasonably clean, for few people live here in winter; but they are being made cleaner day by day, until the last day of April, when they are all flooded and washed clean. The iron fences and railings are actually scrubbed by an army of women with buckets of water and rags. Other women are digging in the ditches, sawing wood, or drawing wagons through the streets.

On the first day of May there is a grand opening. This year it was of especial importance, as it opened to the public the new bath-house Kaiserbad, which cost this enterprising municipality 1,250,000 florins, and is the finest bath-house in the whole wide world, I am told. This marvelous celebration, which began with a military parade on the first day of the month, ended on the fifth with a banquet in the city park café, at which Monsieur Ludwig