[Why Germans Wear Spectacles] A mile or two above Eberbach we saw a peculiar ruin projecting above the foliage which clothed the peak of a high and very steep hill.

This ruin consisted of merely a couple of crumbling masses of masonry which bore a rude resemblance to human faces; they leaned forward and touched foreheads, and had the look of being absorbed in conversation.

This ruin had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there was no great deal of it, yet it was called the "Spectacular Ruin." LEGEND OF THE "SPECTACULAR RUIN" The captain of the raft, who was as full of history as he could stick, said that in the Middle Ages a most prodigious fire-breathing dragon used to live in that region, and made more trouble than a tax-collector.

He was as long as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him.

His breath bred pestilence and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine.