Luscious trailing
sauerkraut; but the kings, in stone or bronze, stand up in the
marketplace or the public square, or on the bridge abutment, or
just back of the brewery, in every German city and town along the
route.
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 roadcrossing; 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.
