rought at their crocheting or embroidering; the students fed sugar to
their dogs, or discussed duels, or illustrated new fencing tricks
with their little canes; and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, and
everywhere peace and good-will to men. The trees were jubilant with
birds, and the paths with rollicking children. One could have a seat in
that place and plenty of music, any afternoon, for about eight cents, or
a family ticket for the season for two dollars.

For a change, when you wanted one, you could stroll to the Castle, and
burrow among its dungeons, or climb about its ruined towers, or visit
its interior shows--the great Heidelberg Tun, for instance. Everybody
has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no
doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say
it holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds
eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these
statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere
matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask
is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask
the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me.

I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness
in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of
expense. What could this cask have been built for? The more one studies
over that, the more uncertain and unhappy he becomes. Some historians
say that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples, can dance on
the head of this cask at the same time. Even this does not seem to me
to account for the building of it. It does not even throw light on it. A
profound and scholarly Englishman--a specialist--who had made the great
Heidelberg Tun his sole study for fifteen years, told me he had at last
satisfied himself that the ancients built it to make German cream in.
He said that the average German cow yielded from one to two and half
teaspoons of milk, when she was not worked in the plow or the hay-wagon
more than eighteen or nineteen hours a day. This milk was very sweet and
good, and a beautiful transparent bluish tint; but in order to get cream
from it in the most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary.
Now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect several
milkings in a teacup, pour it into the Great Tun, fill up with water,
and then skim of