BATHING REVELRY.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 21, 15 September 1911, Page 2

BATHING REVELRY.

WILD SCENES IN THE DANUBE,

The heat lias completely changed the character of the quiet and order-loving Viennese. Everyone who can by any device escape the heat of the city goes out to the banks of the Danube, and resorting to a garb that resembles that of the untamed savage disports himself for hours at a time in the water of the river. The scene is curious. Many figures looking like apes are seen grasping the trunks of trees as they sit among the branches above the water. Most of these are gentlemen muolv in request by the bathing-cabin proprietors, whose cabins should have been vacated some hours previously. Others swim about in the water, making organised attacks on passing boats and tipping the occupants into the water. The other afternoon the frequenters of the place became riotous beyond the control of any swimming master or other person in authority. A member of the municipal body finally rose, superß" in a hybrid bathing costume of striped material, insisted on as comme il faut in the mixed bathing establishment, and commenced to make a speech. The poor gentleman got the surprise of his life when he was seized from behind and flung out into the green water of the Danube. The bathing orgy proceeds apace. Those in possession of bathing huts refuse to allow the claims of the newcomers to the reversion of the same, and they are forced to uudress, all unconcerned, on the sands and trust their belongings to the hands of fate.