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.