L10,000, and the shares have for some years paid a handsome
dividend--the whole of which must be paid out of the pockets of
travellers and visitors.'[78]


[78] Murray, _ubi supra_.


Mr Sala in his interesting work, already quoted, furnishes the
completest account of Hombourg, its Kursaal, and gambling,
which I have condensed as follows:--

`In Hombourg the Kursaal is everything, and the town nothing.
The extortionate hotel-keepers, the "snub-nosed rogues of
counter and till," who overcharge you in the shops, make their
egregious profits from the Kursaal. The major part of the
Landgrave's revenue is derived from the Kursaal; he draws
L5000 a year from it. He and his house are sold to the
Kursaal; and the Board of Directors of the Kursaal are the real
sovereigns and land-graves of Hesse Hombourg. They have
metamorphosed a miserable mid-German townlet into a city of
palaces. Their stuccoed and frescoed palace is five hundred
times handsomer than the mouldy old Schloss, built by William
with the silver leg. They have planted the gardens; they have
imported the orange-trees; they have laid out the park, and
enclosed the hunting-grounds; they board, lodge, wash, and tax
the inhabitants; and I may say, without the slightest attempt at
punning, that the citizens are all _Kursed_.

`In the Kursaal is the ball or concert-room, at either end of