One great lack in the Exhibition is
lavatories. Even at my hotel--a place of gilded saloons--they charged two
florins (about 3_s_. 4_d_.) for a plain bath, as if in sheer surprise. In
"Old Buda" I could only get a bucket from an old woman in which to wash.
And the next day, when I repaired confidently in search of this bucket,
there was nothing but a tiny saucepan, the contents of which she poured
over my hands, watering a garden-plot at the same time. After the first
jet I moved my hands away and said that would do. "No, no," she cried:
"if you wash, you must wash properly." And I had to stand still and be
poured upon till she was satisfied.
Perhaps the most interesting exhibit is the "ethnographic village,"
designed to represent the life of the Hungarian provinces, though made
rather ridiculous by the rigidity of the waxwork figures, arranged about
the quaint and impossibly clean houses in their various occupations, but
having the air of "tableaux morts" rather than of "tableaux vivants." The
best group was _al fresco_, representing half-naked gipsy-like creatures
with coal-black hair squatting outside tents and mud-houses, the women
smoking pipes. And this exhibition of unrealities brings me on to the
most original feature of the Exhibition, which seems to have escaped all
the reporters--to wit, the exhibition of realities.
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