DEATH AND THE LANDLORD 283 _From a Dance of Death printed in the Fifteenth Century, now in the Court Library in Stuttgart_ ZUR SONNE IN WINNENDEN, WÜRTTEMBERG 284 THE GEORGE AND DRAGON, IN WARGRAVE, ENGLAND 286 ZUM POSTGARTEN, IN MÜNCHEN, BAVARIA 289 _The Cover-Design is from the sign of the “Goldene Sonne” in Leonberg, Württemberg_ Old Tavern Signs CHAPTER I HOSPITALITY AND ITS TOKENS [Illustration: THE COCK FLEET-STREET LONDON] Old Tavern Signs CHAPTER I HOSPITALITY AND ITS TOKENS “Und es ist vorteilhaft, den Genius Bewirten: giebst du ihm ein Gastgeschenk, So lässt er dir ein schöneres zurück. Die Stätte, die ein guter Mensch betrat, Ist eingeweiht....” GOETHE. “To house a genius is a privilege; How fine so e’er a gift thou givest him, He leaves a finer one behind for thee. The spot is hallowed where a good man treads.” Without a question, the first journey that ever mortals made on this round earth was the unwilling flight of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden out into an empty world. Many of us who condemn this world as a vale of tears would gladly make the return journey into Paradise, picturing in bright colors the road that our first parents trod in bitterness and woe. Happy in a Paradise in which all the beauties of the first creation were spread before their eyes, where no enemies lurked, and where even the wild beasts were faithful companions, Adam and Eve could not, with the least semblance of reason, plead as an excuse for traveling that constraint which springs from man’s inward unrest striving for the perfect haven of peace beyond the vicissitudes of his lot. And as Adam and Eve went out, weak and friendless, into a strange world, so it was long before their poor descendants dared to leave their sheltering homes and fare forth into unknown and distant parts. Still, the bitter trials which the earliest travelers had to bear implanted in their hearts the seeds of a valor which has won the praise of all the spiritual leaders of men, from the Old Testament worthies, with their injunction “to care for the stranger within the gates,” to the divine words of the Nazarene: “I was a stranger, and ye took me in.... Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”