Year: 1873

While we are in the midst of the American
holiday season it will be found quite


pleasant to read how life goes among


the celebrated watering places of the


Continent of Europe. Louise Muhl-


bach's highly interesting letter to the HERALD
| from Ems, which will be found elsewhere


has On interest that is historical as well as
| picturesque. When we read the little ro-
! mances in real life that are braided with the


stories of the season at Saratoga, White Sui


phur or Sharon Springs, we recognize for


how much the influence of woman counts in


the narrative. ''To drink the waters !" How


many serious and subtle reasons for a


journey to the spas are masked behind


that phrase we all know. Suggestive


of digestions spoiled and physical systems out


of repair as the recourse to mineral waters


may be, we all know that debilitated constitu-


tions are among the last things we expect to
| meet around the saline or chalybeate springs


Here and there an individual may be found
| who studies with live interest the chemists


analyses of the waters; but to analyze hu-


manity and find out whether according to


taste, a man is the ''salt of the earth or has


gold veins in him is the occupation of the
majority of womankind there. There woman


studies under conditions not calculated, it is
true, to discover the more occult points of
mans nature, yet satisfactory to some; for these
minor points are little cared about if
the man, like the water, sparkles
to the eye and leaves the proper
,rif 4 t1o
conditions exist as to the studying part of the
matter but the intrigues and events that
have made it famous are not of such frivolous
kinds as those that are nursed in the memory
OF our bellies long, perhaps, after they have
come to nursing of q different kind, and
which deck the columns sacred to Jenkins,


wherein the cautious on dit begins each item,
and the parties of the first and second parts
are respectively indicated by an initial letter
and some dots


Miss Muhlbach gives us the history of
Ems, social and pathological. The posi-
tive good claimed by some ladies un-
blessed, the pleasant walks in view of the
green mountains in the valley of the Lain,
all give place in her mind to the
time when certain kings and emperors
proposed to make it a trysting place
for chat about European affairs
Thither came unexpectedly beautiful woman,
an Empress of France and the goddess of
fashion, to mar the plan or have share
therein. The goddess went down to the Kursaal
and drank the waters, but was left by the
royalty of the Continent to be imperial alone
at Ems. The story of Miss Mihlbach raises |
corner of tie diplomatic curtain of the past,
which displays pretty picture of feminine
Machiavelism instructive to contemplate.
Russia, Austria and Prussia, heroically speak
ing, were to have gone to the waters with their
wives but the goddess of millinery and
dress goods, Eugene the French Empress,
was there before them, and very pretty
little byplay was the result. The
Russian Empress halted at Darmstadt
and announced herself sick The Prussian
and, in fine, the woman who went there to
bring French influence to bear on the sover-
eign gathering was outwitted by another
Empress, but only by compromise which
left some success and some humiliation to the
Empress Of the French. Whatever was made
or marred by Eugenie's visit, the Czarina in
vented verb for the benefit of the Impera-
trice, which invention, perhaps. had as much
womanly pique in it as diplomatic perspica-
city. She would not 60 to Ems she would
not s'encanailler. Woman in diplomacy has
exerted greater influence than in this
particular instance but around it clus-
tered number of bafled purposes
on both sides, which, if successfully
wrought out on either side, might have been
causes for the strengthening of more thrones
than three, or have hastened the tumbling of
a fourth. 1t may, perhaps, yet be o marvel to
people now unborn why these kings and en-
perors did not all conspire against their peoples
instead of steadily attempting each to under
mine the other. The cause will doubtless be
found in the fact that emperors have ambitious
weaknesses as well as wives, and that the most
cautious sovereign must dance at times to the
popular passions as rhythmically and fatally as
the village children to the piper with the magic
flute.


Miss Muhlbach from this story of impe-
rial wives comes to another watering place
anecdote before which it pales, because the issue
thereof was not lost like an echo in the recesses
of court chit-chat or the record buried in the
pigeon-holes offoreign offices, to feed the book
worms Of another generation. On the 18th of
July, 1870, Benedict, the French Ambassador,
after a few moments conversation on the
promenade at Ems with King William of
was seen walking along with an access OF
offended dignity in his bearing. There is
stone with date now marking the spot where
they met There was an empty throne in
Spain then as there is now, for all the pother
about Hohenzollern accession to the place of
Isabella III. Persons passing by the stone