They were playing Strauss's _Blue Danube_, and the familiar strains of the delightful waltz were so infectious that both were seized by a desire to get up and dance.
There was constant amusement, too, watching the crowd, with its many original and curious types.

There were serious college professors, with gold-rimmed spectacles, buxom _nounous_ in their uniform cloaks and long ribbon streamers, nicely dressed children romping merrily but not noisily, more queer-looking students in shabby frock coats, tight at the waist, trousers too short, and comical hats, stylishly dressed women displaying the latest fashions, brilliantly uniformed army officers strutting proudly, dangling their swords--an attractive and interesting crowd, so different, thought the two Americans, from the cheap, evil-smelling, ill-mannered mob of aliens that invades their own Central Park the days when there is music, making it a nuisance instead of a pleasure.
Here everyone belonged apparently to the better class; the women and children were richly and fashionably dressed, the officers looked smart in their multi-coloured uniforms, and, no matter how one might laugh at the students, there was an atmosphere of good-breeding and refinement everywhere which Shirley was not accustomed to see in public places at home.

A sprinkling of workmen and people of the poorer class were to be seen here and there, but they were in the decided minority.

Shirley, herself a daughter of the Revolution, was a staunch supporter of the immortal principles of Democracy and of the equality of man before the law.

But all other talk of equality was the greatest sophistry and charlatanism.