you. Attend while it is read. If you deny
the charge, and oblige us to demand the
writer's presence, you will take the greater
consequences if it is proved. If you admit the
charge at once, and save that trouble, you
will take the lesser consequences." " Well!
It was all true! " said the cabman with a
shrug, " so I took the three weeks, and here
I am!"

In Hamburgh the cab-masters have a
thorough check upon their servants. When
the driver sets down, he is bound to give
his fare a ticket, by way of discount; for
on presenting this card at the stable it
will be exchanged for a penny. Of course
no passenger takes that trouble; so that
these checks become a small paper currency.
They are always worth a penny, and you
pass them as such. By-and-by, waiters,
small dealers, &c., get accumulations of them,
and present them for payment. The master
counts them, and knows then, whether his
men have given, during a certain time, correct
accounts of their stewardships.

The handsomest and best-regulated public
vehicles are those of Vienna. Hackney
coaches, indeed, as the word is understood with
us, they are not; for the light, trim, elegant
little carriages that dash along the streets
as fast as a Hansom, are no more like the
crazy conveniences we used to call by that
name, than a washerwoman's horse is like a
hunter.

In Vienna they have retained the old
French name for them—Fiacres; and the
capital of the Kaisers would be altogether at
a nonplus without them. They are—like the
gondolas of Venice, the mules of Spain, the
hacks of Oxford, the camels of the Desert, or
the " noddies " of Glasgow "—the recognised
means of moving about." They are little,
low carriages, like our broughams, very neatly
made, and cleanly fitted. It is customary,
indeed, to turn the interiors into a sort of
sitting-room; some, being fitted with a small
slab or table on which a book or pamphlet
may be laid, a nice little case for matches to
light the eternal cigar of Germany, a looking-glass,
and a brush and comb! They have
generally two small fast horses, called juckers:
a species of cattle something similar to our
half-bred Galloway. The pace they maintain
is really surprising. These dapper equipages
—light almost as baby-carts—rattle along the
narrow, slippery streets—on the pavement—off
the pavement—round corners—down short,
steep, break-neck hills—from morning to
night; yet few are the accidents or offences
ever attributed to a fiacre. The Viennese are
so attached to this mode of conveyance, that
nearly everyone who can afford it, keeps a
fiacre in his service: from the magnificent
Hungarian prince with his one hundred and
fifty thousand pounds a year, to the suburban
beau. Private carriages are generally used
only on state occasions, on account of the far
greater convenience of the fiacre. Indeed,
Prime Minister Prince Schwartzenberg has
no other carriage whatever, and drives about,
on visits of ceremony or otherwise, in one of
them.

A great Roman philosopher considers it a
reproach to any one to walk, who can ride in
a carriage, inasmuch as it is a great waste of
time; and the Italians have a saying to this
day, that no creatures voluntarily move about
in the hot summer sunlight, except mad dogs
and Englishmen. The time a Viennese fiacre
is capable of saving, is really prodigious. A
man may eat drink, sleep, in one, and yet
go about his business. If he feel disposed
for a walk, his fiacre will follow him like
a dog—not ostentatiously, but at just a right
distance: the driver keeping a respectfully
sharp eye upon the first movement of an eye
or a finger that may symbol your intentions.
When you express it, up he dashes, and
never pulls up without a joke or a pleasant
laugh.

The usual price paid for a fiacre, varies
from rather a high tariff to as much as can be
got out of the customer; and truth obliges
the confession that the drivers are a most
unconscionable set of dogs. They may be
had, however, for a florin (two shillings) an
hour, or from ten to sixteen shillings a day.
If hired for the month, the total cost of a
fiacre, including the driver, keep of horses,
and everything else, varies from ten to twelve
or even fifteen pounds, for a very grand
turnout indeed.

As a curious instance of Austrian
exclusiveness, it may be remarked that no fiacre
having a number on it, is allowed to enter the
court-yards of the great houses; and to evade
this difficulty—which would be tantamount to
excluding the conveyances of nine guests out
of ten—anyone who goes to the police, and
declares that he has engaged a certain fiacre
by the month, and that man and horses are at
his private service, may have the number
removed. The right of entrance will then
be allowed. Under these circumstances, the
drivers will, if required, mount a livery.

The severity of the climate, and state of the
streets in winter, render the services of a
fiacre almost a necessity. Winter is, therefore,
their harvest season; but, they are by
no means without employment in summer,
when the fierce dry heats and perpetual
clouds of dust make any means of transit
more agreeable than the legs. An unlucky
stranger, who may be going to present his
letters of introduction, or proceeding on any
other delicate mission, finds himself at this
season half-blinded—every pore of his skin
filled with a fine dust; boots, waistcoat,
trousers, face, whiskers, hair, all the same colour,
and that colour whitey-brown; and he is glad
enough to call a fiacre to the rescue. Another
purpose which they serve, in summer, is to
take young cavaliers to the Prater—the Hyde
Park of the Austrian capital—where their
own horses and grooms are waiting for them: