Europe Revised — 14 - Ch. VII: Thence On and On to Verbotenland, pt. 3

By these surface indications alone the most inexperienced traveler would know he had reached Germany, even without the halt at the custom house on the border; or the crossing watchman in trim uniform jumping to attention at every road-crossing; or the beautifully upholstered, handswept state forests; or the hedges of willow trees along the brooks, sticking up their stubby, twiggy heads like so many disreputable hearth-brooms; or the young grain stretching in straight rows crosswise of the weedless fields and looking, at a distance, like fair green-printed lines evenly spaced on a wide brown page.

Also, one observes everywhere surviving traces that are unmistakable of the reign of that most ingenious and wideawake of all the earlier rulers of Germany, King Verboten the Great.

In connection with the life and works of this distinguished ruler is told an interesting legend well worthy of being repeated here.

It would seem that King Verboten was the first crowned head of Europe to learn the value of keeping his name constantly before the reading public.

Rameses the Third of Egypt--that enterprising old constant advertiser who swiped the pyramids of all his predecessors and had his own name engraved thereon--had been dead for many centuries and was forgotten when Verboten mounted the throne, and our own Teddy Roosevelt would not be born for many centuries yet to come; so the idea must have occurred to King Verboten spontaneously, as it were.

Therefore he took counsel with himself, saying: "I shall now erect statues to myself.

Dynasties change and wars rage, and folks grow fickle and tear down statues.

None of that for your Uncle Dudley K. Verboten!

No; this is what I shall do: On every available site in the length and breadth of this my realm I shall stick up my name;

and, wherever possible, near to it I shall engrave or paint the names of my two favorite sons, Ausgang and Eingang--to the end that, come what may, we shall never be forgotten in the land of our birth."

And then he went and did it; and it was a thorough job--so thorough a job that, to this good year of our Lord you may still see the name of that wise king everywhere displayed in Germany--on railroad stations and in railroad trains; on castle walls and dead walls and brewery walls, and the back fence of the Young Ladies' High School.

And nearly always, too, you will find hard by, over doors and passageways, the names of his two sons, each accompanied or underscored by the heraldic emblem of their house--a barbed and feathered arrow pointing horizontally.

And so it was that King Verboten lived happily ever after and in the fullness of time died peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his wives, his children and his courtiers; and all of them sorrowed greatly and wept, but the royal signpainter sorrowed most of all.

I know that certain persons will contest the authenticity of this passage of history; they will claim Verboten means in our tongue Forbidden, and that Ausgang means Outgoing, and Eingang means Incoming--or, in other words, Exit and Entrance; but surely this could not be so.

If so many things were forbidden, a man in Germany would be privileged only to die--and probably not that, unless he died according to a given formula; and certainly no human being with the possible exception of the comedian who used to work the revolving-door trick in Hanlon's Fantasma, could go out of and come into a place so often without getting dizzy in the head.

No--the legend stands as stated.

Even as it is, there are rules enough in Germany, rules to regulate all things and all persons.

At first, to the stranger, this seems an irksome arrangement--this posting of rules and orders and directions and warnings everywhere--but he finds that everyone, be he high or low, must obey or go to jail; there are no exceptions and no evasions; so that what is a duty on all is a burden on none.

Take the trains, for example.

Pretty much all over the Continent the railroads are state-owned and state-run, but only in Germany are they properly run.

True, there are so many uniformed officials aboard a German train that frequently there is barely room for the paying travelers to squeeze in; but the cars are sanitary and the schedule is accurately maintained, and the attendants are honest and polite and cleanly of person--wherein lies another point of dissimilarity between them and those scurvy, musty, fusty brigands who are found managing and operating trains in certain nearby countries.

I remember a cup of coffee I had while going from Paris to Berlin.

It was made expressly for me by an invalided commander-in-chief of the artillery corps of the imperial army--so I judged him to be by his costume, air and general deportment--who was in charge of our carriage and also of the small kitchen at the far end of it.

He came into our compartment and bowed and clicked his heels together and saluted, and wanted to know whether I would take coffee.

Recklessly I said I would.

He filled in several blanks of a printed form, and went and cooked the coffee and brought it back, pausing at intervals as he came along to fill in other blanks.

Would I take cream in my coffee?

I

would; so he filled in a couple of blanks.

Would I take sugar?

I said I would take two lumps.

He put in two lumps and filled in another blank.

I really prefer my coffee with three lumps in it; but I noticed that his printed form was now completely filled in, and I hated to call for a third lump and put him to the trouble of starting his literary labors all over again.

Besides, by that time the coffee would be cold.

So I took it as it was--with two lumps only--and it was pretty fair coffee for European coffee.

It tasted slightly of the red tape and the chicory, but it was neatly prepared and promptly served.

And so, over historic streams no larger than creeks would be in America, and by castles and cabbages and kings and cows, we came to Berlin;

and after some of the other Continental cities Berlin seemed a mighty restful spot to be in, and a good one to tarry in awhile.

It has few historical associations, has Berlin, but we were loaded to the gills with historical associations by now.

It does not excel greatly in Old Masters, but we had already gazed with a languid eye upon several million Old Masters of all ages, including many very young ones.

It has no ancient monuments and tombs either, which is a blessing.

Most of the statuary in Berlin is new and shiny and provided with all the modern conveniences--the present kaiser attended competently to that detail.

Wherever, in his capital, there was space for a statue he has stuck up one in memory of a member of his own dynasty, beginning with a statue apiece for such earlier rulers as Otho the Oboe-Player, and Joachim, surnamed the Half-a-Ton--let some one correct me if I have the names wrong--and finishing up with forty or fifty for himself.

That is, there were forty or fifty of him when I was there.

There are probably more now.

In its essentials Berlin suggests a progressive American city, with Teutonic trimmings.

Conceive a bit of New York, a good deal of Chicago, a scrap of Denver, a slice of Hoboken, and a whole lot of Milwaukee;

conceive this combination as being scoured every day until it shines;

conceive it as beautifully though somewhat profusely governed, and laid out with magnificent drives, and dotted with big, handsome public buildings, and full of reasonably honest and more than reasonably kindly people--and you have Berlin.

It was in Berlin that I picked up the most unique art treasure I found anywhere on my travels--a picture of the composer Verdi that looked exactly like Uncle Joe Cannon, without the cigar; whereas Uncle Joe Cannon does not look a thing in the world like Verdi, and probably wouldn't if he could.

I have always regretted that our route through the German Empire took us across the land of the Hessians after dark, for I wanted to see those people.

You will recollect that when George the Third, of England, first put into actual use the doctrine of Hands Across the Sea he used the Hessians.

They were hired hands.

Chapter VIII