A thrifty burgher of Nuremberg, eager to get into the landed aristocracy on any terms, foreclosed a mortgage on a stretch of most unpromising sand and swamp around Brandenberg. It was of so little worth as to be frequently spoken of as “the sandbox of the Holy Roman Empire,” The Hohenzollerns

attacked this uninviting problem with real German thrift and tenacity. They resolved to make their swamps and sand barrens productive like the rich lands of their neighbors. [{47}] Flinching from no drudgery themselves, they would allow none of their people to do so. Every Hohenzollern son and daughter was brought up to unsparing hard work, severe economy, plain food and coarse clothing, with a rigid code of morals.

At the time when the example of Louis XIV. was debauching every German princeling into having a showy court with a pretentious palace and a tinseled retinue, all wrung from the poor peasantry, the King of Prussia was running his court after the manner of a close-fisted, land-gaining German farmer.

Cabbages that could not be sold [{48}] were served on the royal tables in order to save a few thalers for the support of the army, and add to the war chest.

The shabby appointments of the palace were the derision of Europe. The common people of Prussia had, however, a much larger share of what their labor produced than those of any other part of Europe. The King not only set a good example in making the most out of everything, but he personally caned lessons of industry and frugality into his people, high and low.

There were occasionally black sheep in even such a sternly regulated family, but as a general rule the sons and daughters married strong, clean mates, [{49}] and strictly maintained the family traditions. A provision against the way ward princelings was made by which their possessions passed into the main house if they fell below the standard. So the Hohenzollerns grew, and Prussia grew from a despised sandbarren to be one of the Six Great Powers of Europe, and is now the head of the mighty German Empire. We do not have as full history of the House of Savoy, but we have enough to know that in much the same way, at the same time, and by much the same moral discipline, it arose from the lordship of a little stretch of mountain [{50}] land in the Alps to rule over United Italy.

THE most attractive feature of this self-pruning of the objectionable growths in society, as said before, is that the victims destroy themselves under the hallucination that they are drinking the richest wine of earthly pleasure. When execution can be made a matter of keen relish to the condemned, certainly nothing is wanting on the score of humanity.

[{51}] I ANTICIPATE the objection that slaying bad men by means of their own vicious propensities brings much misery to those connected with them.