AT one time Baden-Baden was one of the most famous gambling places in the world, but it is now simply a fashionable watering place, very like Saratoga. It is beautifully situated in the valley of the Oos, at the entrance to the Black Forest. During the time the gambling rooms flourished, great pains were taken to make it as attractive as possible. Long, wide avenues were laid out and planted with beautiful trees, picturesque drives were made, and all the natural advantages were improved a thousand fold, so that to-day it is one of the most beautiful spots imaginable.

The buildings, formerly the scenes of fashionable riot and dissipation, were built in the most elaborate manner and most lavishly decorated with beautiful frescoes by most eminent artists.

Nature made Baden-Baden a natural pleasure and health resort, and wherever men and women go for pleasure or health you may be sure of meeting vice in almost every form. The pleasure seekers must be perpetually stimulated, and those who haunt mineral springs to recover health, generally lost by persistent following of vicious practices, come expecting the waters to build them up to the resumption of the vices that brought them down. Consequently they gamble.

A few years ago Baden-Baden was the head centre of gambling for the world. The Frenchman, Englishman, German, Russian, American, Turk, and, for that matter, men of all nations came here to drink the waters, take the baths and gamble. Following in the train of the rich invalids came the professional gamblers, hawks following pigeons everywhere.

The government gave the exclusive right to manage a

gambling house to one company, or rather one man. Originally a Frenchman named Benezet had it, paying some forty thousand dollars a year for the privilege of plucking fools, and when he died, leaving an immense fortune, his son-in-law, Dupressoir, continued the business. The money received by the government for this privilege was appropriated to the beautifying of the city and the other mineral water resorts in the Grand Duchy.

The gambling was done in an immense building which is now the “Conversation-haus,” and, if its walls could speak, many a tale, comic and tragic, they could tell.

You are assailed with all sorts of legends concerning it. There was a lady, of what nationality was never known, a woman who commenced gambling at the age of thirty-six, who always came to the rooms closely veiled, whose face was never seen. She played so much money invariably, leaving the rooms when she had lost or won her limit. It was never ascertained where she lodged, even. For twenty years she came to the rooms twice each day, staking a Napoleon (four dollars) on each turn of the wheel till she had lost or won fifty, and when that loss or that winning was accomplished she glided out, only to reappear the next day.

There is a wild legend prevalent that this mysterious being’s lover had lost his fortune at the tables, and had blown his brains out as a fitting finish to his folly, and that there was an irresistible impulse that brought her to the scene of his death, and kept her there all her life.

What interested Tibbitts the most in this legend was the statement that the lover lost all his money, and then blew out his brains.

“Any man, or alleged man,” said Tibbitts, “who would lose a fortune at such a game as they played here, must have great faith in his marksmanship, to try to hit his brains, no matter how short the range.”

The Young Man who Knows Everything wanted Tibbitts to make plain the point to the remark, and then the Professor had to go on and explain that what Mr. Tibbitts intended was that a man who would gamble at all must have an infinitesimal brain, so small, indeed, as to make it safe from the best marksman. The young man pondered over it a minute, and expressed himself satisfied.

There is another story of a woman, an old and haggard woman, who came every day and staked a Napoleon. She would not play unless there should be in the room a child, a young, fresh child; and she used to take the baby, and put her Napoleon in its little hand, and have it place it on the black or red, as the child’s whim dictated. And it is said that she generally won. Like all the rest of the mysterious beings of the gambling hall, this eccentric old lady disappeared one day, and was never seen again.

It made little difference to her successors. The croupier, that calm, impassive man, raked in the Napoleons, or raked them out, the wheel revolved, and the life or death of one habituÉ of the place made no more difference than a footprint on the sands of the sea.

German students who, by extravagant living, encumbered themselves with debt, and who were afraid to apply at home for more money, came hither to make enough at gambling to restore themselves. They never did it. M. Benezet was not paying forty thousand dollars a year rent for the privilege of running a game at which improvident and extravagant young men could make up their folly—not he. His game was to take what they had left, without knowing or caring what became of them afterward.

The most common legend of them all is of the young man who walked calmly into the room with one hundred Napoleons, all he had left, and staked one piece after another, and lost invariably. Finally there was but one left. Turning to his friend, he remarked calmly, “This is my life I am wagering.” He put it upon the black, the wheel revolved, he lost.

Without a word this calm young man went out, and hung himself with his handkerchief to a tree, where his inanimate body was found the next morning.

This young man is very plentiful in Baden-Baden, though not much more so than the same kind of a fellow who, staking his last gold piece, draws a pistol from his pocket, and shoots himself at the table, the croupier paying no attention to it, and going on with the game as though it was a regular part of it, and an everyday occurrence.

Tibbitts frowned upon this legend severely, holding it to be unworthy of credence. “The young man,” said Tibbitts, “would have gone out and pawned his revolver for ten dollars, and taken another hack at it.”

And then this young man with a lively imagination went on to show that no matter how desperate the situation there is always a chance to get out. His story was to this effect:

A young New Yorker had gone to Paris with some thousands of dollars given him by his indulgent father, that he might see the world and study the languages. He studied French with a young grisette whose acquaintance he had made, and a very pleasant life he lived, till one morning the two discovered that they hadn’t a dollar between them left, that he had spent in three months with his syren what was sufficient to have supported him decently for three years. He dared not send home for more money, he could not leave his friend (that’s what they call it), and they had not enough to buy another meal.

The pawn shops were resorted to, till everything they had was gone and starvation stared them in the face.

They wept over it, and finally came to a conclusion. They loved each other dearly, they could not live apart, and so they decided to die together. She rushed out and pawned her last pair of stockings to purchase charcoal; they closed all the cracks in the room and lighted the coal, that its fumes might kill them in the regular Parisian style.

The girl died, but life was left in the young man. He rose and broke a window with a boot—no, he had pawned his boots—but with something, anyhow, and let in fresh air, which saved his life.

Then he turned and looked at the poor girl on the bed, her long hair flung negligently over the pillow, her face not wasted by disease, but plump and fresh as in life.

“Poor Fifine,” he sighed in agony; “how beautiful she is, and how I loved her and how she loved me! I shall never love again. From this time out my life, should I live, will be a desert waste. Should I live? Alas! I cannot, will not live. Why did I spring from that couch and break open the window? I cannot live without her; I will die with her.”

He commenced closing the window and looking for more charcoal, when something occurred to him.

“Come to think, I won’t die with her. Dying with her wouldn’t do her any good, and if I live, she, my love, will perpetually have something to look down upon.”

He merely walked down and reported a case of suicide, and after the investigation claimed the body as the next best friend, which was all right.

Then he sold the body to a medical college for dissection, for sixty dollars, and bought a second-class ticket and went home to New York and told his mother he had been robbed of his money, and got her to intercede with the irate father, and is, I believe, living in comparative luxury to-day.”

“How could he have got out on the street, if he had pawned all his clothes and his boots?” queried the Young Man who Knows Everything.

Tibbitts answered with asperity that there were so-called men everywhere in the world who perpetually strewed the salt of fact over the flowery fields of fancy. “You are the young man, I believe, who made me miserable the other day, by unearthing the fact that there never was a William Tell.”

The Professor, after thinking the tale over awhile, said that such a thing might have happened in Oshkosh, but never in Paris. In Paris the young woman would have lived and sold the body of the young man and started a cafÉ on the proceeds.

Then the young man remarked that revenge was a fool’s luxury, and that the New Testament precept about turning the other cheek, was not only sound in religion, but was the highest good sense, as religion always is. To nurse a hatred is more expensive than to keep a horse in feed or a fine watch in repair.

The gambling came to an end finally, and the romance of Baden-Baden with it. A decree withdrew the privilege of the establishment, another prohibited the establishing of other places, and on one fateful night in 1872, at twelve o’clock, the bankers turned off their lights, and Baden-Baden as a gambling resort was no more.

The old gambling house is now called the Conversationhaus and is used for concerts and balls, and is the favorite rendezvous for the fashionable world, especially during the time the band plays, in the morning, afternoon and evening. Then the wealth and fashion residing in Baden and representing all nationalities promenades the beautiful avenues, or, making little parties, sips beer and laughs and flirts to its hearts’ content.

Near the Conversationhaus is the “Trinkhalle,” where invalids, and those who wish to be thought invalids, drink the famous mineral waters that have made Baden celebrated all over the world. The rooms are magnificently furnished, and on the arcade in front of the building are some fine frescoes illustrating different legends of the Black Forest.

The peculiar waters of Baden-Baden come from a great many springs in the hill-sides, and are conducted to the various bathing places in pipes, and they are as hot as you want them. One of the springs is known as Hell Spring, because of the temperature of the water, one would suppose, but the Badenese have another reason for its name. Of course they have a legend for it, which runs thus:

A great many centuries ago an irascible and very wicked old man who possessed the ground on which the spring is, had, as a matter of course, a beautiful and supernaturally good daughter. By the way, I never could understand why excessively wicked men in legends always had so sweet a lot of daughters, but I suppose it is necessary in order to have legends.

This daughter was beloved by the son of a neighboring noble who was at feud with her father, and, as a matter of course, the old man opposed the match. The present hot spring was then as cold as ice and a most delicious water for drinking, of which the old man was very fond, which statement proves the legend to be false. No German noble in this or any other period of the world’s history ever knew whether the water on his estate was good for drinking or not. He may have tested it for other purposes, but never for a beverage. He prefers wine or beer.

One day going down to his pet spring he found his girl there, and with her her lover. He was enraged, and when the young man told him he loved his daughter and would wed her, he exclaimed with a horrible oath:

“Wed her! You may wed her when this spring is as hot as hell, and when that happens I will drink to your nuptials in its waters!”

No sooner said than done. The spring changed from its lovely greenish blue to a sulphurous and salty color. Great jets of gas with an unpleasant smell issued, and the water boiled up quite as hot as the place the profane old man had indicated as a standard. And Satan himself, with tail and hoofs, and everything complete, appeared, from where none of the three could determine, and politely handed him a goblet of the boiling water.

He had sworn an oath, and there was no going back upon it. So he took the goblet and swallowed the contents and rolled over in agony and died, as I should suppose any one would.

The young man married the girl, and I doubt not his descendants are interested in the bath houses supplied from the springs.

It isn’t much of a legend, indeed with a little practice I believe I could write a better one myself, but it is as they gave it to me.

The grand bathing houses are on a scale of magnificence that is truly wonderful, and one almost feels like shamming illness simply to enjoy their luxury. Nothing that money can buy, and in Europe as in America, it will buy almost anything, has been spared to make them as attractive to the eye and the other senses as possible. They make up Baden’s stock in trade, and Baden is too good a merchant not to have attractive wares for sale.

One of the favorite excursions from Baden is up the hill to the south of the city to the old castle, the walls of which are said to have been built in the third century, when the Romans constructed fortifications here. From the twelfth century till the completion of the new castle nearer the city, the old Schloss was the residence of the Margraves of the Duchy.

The road leading to the castle winds up the Battert, giving some beautiful views of the valley, with Baden, rich with its luxuriant foliage, nestling at the foot of the Black Mountains, whose dark profile stretches away off far to the north.

Before reaching the steep portion of the ascent, the ladies of the party were provided with donkeys.

The Professor, whose age and avoirdupois rendered steephill climbing a matter of great difficulty, determined that he would ride.

A diminutive donkey, scarcely larger than a good sized Newfoundland dog, was assigned to him, and a most ludicrous sight it was as the party made its start up the hill.

A gentleman six feet in height, with very long legs and a remarkably protuberant abdomen, arrayed in a very ill-fitting coat, light trowsers, a tall hat, and enormous spectacles, with an immense cotton umbrella under one arm, is not a sight to inspire respect, even when it is traveling as infantry.

But take that figure and put it astride of a donkey so small that the rider’s legs have to be drawn up to keep the feet off the ground, and have that donkey a perverse and mischievous animal (most of them answer to this description), and it is about as ludicrous a sight as was ever vouchsafed to mortal ken.

Each donkey is led or driven, as the case may be, by a boy, and the German boy has all the elements of mischief in him that any other boy possesses. And so when this especial boy saw that the entire party were laughing at the Professor, he wisely determined to gain popularity by adding to the merriment. And so he would wink at the people following, and twist the donkey’s tail, and the intelligent animal, knowing what was expected of him, would kick up his heels, and the Professor, one hand busy with the bridle and the other with the umbrella under his arm, would objurgate as much as a Professor dared.

The donkey enjoyed it hugely, for he kicked up his heels with delight, and pranced from one side of the road to the other in an ecstacy of pleasure.

The portly gentleman didn’t seem to think it very funny, although at last he was compelled to join in the general laugh that went up at his expense.

Finally he beat the boy and the donkey both. When the donkey would kick up behind he simply dropped both feet to the ground and brought him to anchor; and when he attempted a shy to one side, one foot on the ground held him to his business; and catching the boy at the trick he took him by the arm, and, with a grip that long years of flagellating boys had perfected, pulled him up in front of him, and everything was pleasant again.

As we toiled up the long hill the gathering clouds presaged a rain storm. Then they broke, and as we reached the old ruin the sun came out with great brilliancy, and gave us a magnificent view up and down the broad, fertile valley.

But, unexpectedly, before we had time to go through the various rooms of the castle the rain began to fall in torrents, which was uncomfortable, the roof having long years ago succumbed to time, which has no more respect for a margrave’s castle than it has for a laborer’s hut. Time is no aristocrat.

We sought shelter in a room that had been fitted up as a restaurant, and then we were treated to a genuine storm right from the Black Forest. The wind howled around the open spaces of the ruined wails, the rain dashed against the window panes in fitful gusts, while above all other sounds could be heard the creaking and moaning of the trees all around us, as they were bent and swayed by the storm. It required but a little stretch of the imagination to fill the room with gallant knights, and to believe it was the din and clatter of battle we heard without.

We were sitting on the ground on which knights and ladies in the centuries past had sat and feasted. There was not an inch of space within a half mile of us that had not its story. Mailed knights in that very room had

And possibly their spirits were hovering over us. If they were, we did not know it; they did not materialize. Instead of the mailed knights and beardless pages and fair ladies of the middle ages, there was a party of Americans in tall hats and short coats, ladies in the latest possible Parisian walking dresses, and instead of the glorious game of war it was a simple game of euchre, which the men played with the same earnestness that characterizes them at home in their business, and the ladies with that utter disregard of rule that characterizes feminine card playing everywhere. It is needless to observe that in the matter of wine the example of the old knights was followed, only we had no visors.

A party of Americans playing cards in the castle of a warlike king! Well! well! There are steamboats on Loch Katrine; there will be a railroad to Jerusalem, and the holy places will yet be illuminated with the electric light. There is no room to-day for sentiment.

This castle was built, originally, by the Romans, and fell into the hands of the Margrave of Baden in 1112. It was necessary in that day to have these strongholds, from which the margraves could issue and make war upon their neighbors, that being their principal business. It was continued as a residence for the Baden potentates till 1689, when Louis XV. of France demolished it, leaving it, less the ivy that has grown over it, as it is to-day.

Its principal use now is to give employment to the donkeys to get to it, and the selling of wine and refreshments to the tourists who hunger after the delightful view it affords.

The new Friedrichsbad is an imposing edifice built against the hillside upon which the springs are located. The exterior is a fine specimen of the Renaissance style of architecture, and is embellished with a great many fine statues, busts and medallions.

The interior is a marvel of completeness and elegance, being finer in all its details than any similar bathing establishment in the world. The wood work is all massive and elegant; the walls and ceilings are artistically frescoed; the bath tubs, large swimming baths, are cut out of solid marble, and are so arranged that the bather can go from one to another, securing any desired temperature without inconvenience.

The water comes from springs on the hillsides, at a temperature of 144° Fahrenheit, and is conveyed by pipes throughout the building, the pipes being so arranged that the water is gradually cooled. In this way one is enabled to bathe in any kind of water he desires. The yield is upwards of one hundred gallons a minute, and are said to be among the most efficacious mineral springs known, the solid ingredients, chiefly chloride of sodium, amounting only to three per cent.

In this magnificent structure, there are the common bath tubs, hewn out of solid blocks of marble and completely let into the floor, with steps leading down to them; large hip baths, supplied with a continual stream of mineral water; an electric bathroom for inhaling the thermal water; baths for the cold water treatment and the cold shower baths; vapor baths, hot air baths, swimming baths of different degrees of temperature, supplied also with shower baths the temperature of whose water can be regulated by the bather, and vapor baths in boxes.

After taking as many of these as he desires, and having been rubbed in a room lurid with hot air, the bather is conducted to a large room where he is enveloped in a warm bath cloak. Then he is taken to a large, luxuriously furnished room where he lies down for half or three-quarters of an hour.

When he emerges from the building, he feels like a new man—or says he does, which is the same thing.

When The Young Man who Knows Everything made that remark, Tibbitts replied promptly that he most earnestly hoped the change would be permanent. “My young friend, if you feel symptoms of getting back to your original self, take more baths.”

Baden merits all the good things said of it. It is a delicious spot, and if one had nothing to do in life but enjoy it, I know of no place where, with money, he could get more out of it. Its people are hospitable, and its physicians will humor you to any disease you choose. If there is nothing the matter with you, they will prescribe just as cheerfully as though you had all the ills that human flesh is heir to, and will pocket their fees with a grace unexcelled. They have had vast experience with hypochondriacs, and know all about it.