Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: evident signs of becoming a more or less picturesque ruin; for only too large a number of his friends and neighbours are in the same plight. The urgent demands of his property for improved agricultural machinery, of his land for drainage, or of his farm buildings for repairs, are all put off to a more convenient season if the money be needed for a grand ball to which all the notabilities of the district are invited, the entertainment of a houseful of visitors from Vienna, or in winter a splendid fete upon the ice. Nothing could be more beautiful than the scene to be witnessed at some of these winter fetes, in which hundreds of lamps and flaming torches convert a picturesque corner of a forest into a piece of fairyland. From the severe winters in many parts of Austria, this form of social gathering is a very favourite one, and is often organised at great expense. Musicians are frequently engaged from Vienna or the provincial capital, ice kiosks of fantastic form are erected and brilliantly lighted, and the skaters, in rich and varied costumes and splendid furs, trace intricate mazes upon the glittering surface of the ice. 1 But though almost all the pleasures of the Austrian nobles are expensive, money alone by no means ensures an entree into the society of the old landed aristocracy. As an example of this, I may mention a case that came to my knowledge a few years ago. A millionaire financier of German origin purchased a large estate in Upper Austria. It was his great ambition to be recognised as a territorial magnate by the old noblesse. As most of those in the vicinity were owners of small but heavily mortgaged estates, he felt confident that they would all be only too glad to court the favour of so great a man as himself, and thus give him the entree into society that he …
