, for
orderliness and rigidity, and perhaps for contentment; since every man
and woman feels that though they are below some one else on the ladder
they are above others; and every day and in every company their vanity
is lightly tickled by hearing their importance, small though it be,
proclaimed by the mention of their titles.

It pleases the foreigners to laugh and sometimes to jeer at the
universal sign of "Verboten" (Forbidden) seen all over Germany. They
look upon it as the seal of an autocratic and bureaucratic government.
It is nothing of the kind. The army, the bureaucracy, the autocratic
Kaiser at the helm, and the landscape bestrewn with "Verboten" and
"Nicht gestattet" (Not allowed), these are necessities in the case of
these people. They do not know instinctively, or by training or
experience, where to expectorate and where not to; where to smoke and
where not to; what to put their feet on and what not to; where to walk
and where not to; when to stare and when not to; when to be dignified
and when to laugh; and, least of all, how to take a joke; how, when,
or how much to eat, drink, or bathe, or how to dress properly or
appropriately. The Emperor is almost the only man in Germany who knows
what chaff is and when to use it.

The more you know them, the longer you live among them, the less you
laugh at "Verboten." The trouble is not that there are too many of
these warnings, but that there are not enough! When you see in flaring
letters in the street-cars, "In alighting the left hand on the left-hand
rail," when you read on the bill of fare in the dining-car brief
instructions underlined, as to how to pour out your wine so that you
will not spill it on the table-cloth; when you see the list of from
ten to fifteen rules for passengers in railway carriages; when you see
everywhere where crowds go and come, "Keep to the right"; when you see
hanging on the railings of the canals that flow through Berlin a life-buoy,
and hanging over it full instructions with diagrams for the
rescue of the drowning; when you see over a post-box, "Aufschrift und
Marke nicht vergessen" (Do not forget to stamp and address your
envelope); when you see in the church entrances a tray with water and
sal volatile, and the countless other directions and remedies and
preventives on every hand, you shrug your Saxon shoulders and smile
pityingly, if you do not stand and stare and then laugh outright, as I
was fool enough to do at first. But