And do not the kings themselves appear on the sign? The “Three Kings” were originally the “Wise Men” from the East. How the Catholic Church came to represent them as kings we read in Fischart’s quaint old German of his amusing “Bienenkorb” of 1580: “Und das sie weiter auss den treien Weisen aus Morgenland trei König gemacht hat und den eynen so Bechschwarz als eynen Moren, ist aus den Weissagungen Salomonis oder Davids gefischet, die da sagen, dass die König aus Morenland Christum anzubeten kommen werden.” The East, the land of the morn, was thus confused with the land of the Moors which we should rather seek to the south of Bethlehem. On “Three Kings’ Day,” of course, the taverns of this name were scenes of special merriment, the good Catholics joyfully shouting, “The King drinks.” “The three gentlemen,” as Carlyle calls them disrespectfully, are buried in the Cologne Cathedral, but their memory is honored still by many a visitor of a “Three Kings” tavern in good Rhenish wine which our forefathers called the theological wine. We find the sign of the famous travelers from distant lands especially on the great roads of commerce leading from Italy over the Alps, so in Augsburg and Basle. Originally a royalist symbol of the landlord’s loyalty to monarchy, of his eagerness to serve crowned guests if fortune should lead them his way, it was changed in the times of the Revolution to the democratic “Three Moors,” and the first landlord who is said to have deprived his three kings of their crowns was the landlord in Basle. Maybe time helped him to make this change, slowly wearing away the gilded glitter of the crowns and darkening the kings to black-a-moors. To-day the famous house in Augsburg, where Charles V once lodged as guest of the rich banker Fugger for more than a year, is called “Three Moors.” The traveler still may see the big fireplace in which the generous merchant burned all the imperial promissory notes.