THE NUPTIAL BATH.

Evening Star, Volume VII, Issue 2042, 20 November 1869, Page 2

THE NUPTIAL BATH.

The Fremdenblatt of Vienna publishes the following ; “ Recently a new-married couple in Vienna left the church in a carriage to enjoy their moon and honey for two in that delicious country between Prague and Dresden, justly called the Switzerland of Saxony. Arrived at Schandau, where they proposed making their first halt, they learned to their dismay that a morning excursion train had flooded the place with visitors, and that every room was occupied, in every inch of the place. They had therefore the pleasing prospect of passing the wedding night in the fields, when a benevolent hotel-keeper, pitying their blank looks of d smay, conceived a bright idea of putting a mattress in the only bath the inn possessed, and thus turning the bath-room into a temporary nuptial cham. ber. As a poet would say, Morpheus had already closed every eyelid in the hotel, when, at the witching hour of midnight, when ghosts delight to take their diversion abroad, cries of distress were heard issuing from the bathfromn. “What can be the matter?” said the other guests ; “what tra» gedy is being enacted?” Light flew from window to window. One old lady—there is always some nervous female of the kind in every dwelling-house—screamed “Fire !” and still more dreadful things, at the top of her voice; while three booming damsels, who acted as chambermaids, rushed in very scanty attire to the mysterious chamber. What was the matter? Well, this. The young bride, wishing to ring the bell for a maid, had caught hold of what he supposed to be the bell-rope, and pulled it smartly. Unhappily for her and her spouse, it was the cord of the shower bath above their heads, and fortwith down plumped such a deluge of cold water as would throw a damper upon the most devoted of honeymooning couples. Her husband, in his dismay, caught frantically at another cord on his side of their extemporised couch, but the only response was an equally liberal deluge of water, this time nearly boiling hot. The unhappy pair then screamed in unison, and the bride, in the excitement of the moment, uttered sentiments anything but complimentary to her 1 fond spouse. When the servants came, they were just in time to rescue the unluokly pair from drowning; for the room was already half full of water, and the wife was perched like a monkey on her husband’s back uttering lamentable cries, while her good man was fumbling in the dark trying to find the door. Let us hope that the subsequent wedded life of this unfortunate couple may be happier than its commencement. ”