skill?
Who but the cooper!
None but he can build
The precious fount and source."

(With a little more to the same effect.) This song pleased everyone
beyond measure, but none so much as Master Martin, whose eyes beamed
with joy and delight. Without attending to Herr Vollrad--who spake more
than was necessary concerning that "manner" of "Herr Mueller's" which
the journeyman had "hit off by no means badly"--Master Martin rose,
and, lifting his glass on high, cried: "Come here--thou--proper cooper
and fine master-singer--come here! with me--with thy master--shalt thou
empty this glass!"

Reinhold had to do as he was told. As he came back to his seat he
whispered to the thoughtful Friedrich, "_You_ must sing now, what you
snug last night."

"You are mad," Friedrich cried, in anger. But Reinhold spoke out to the
company, in a loud voice, saying:--

"Honourable gentlemen and masters, my dear brother Friedrich here knows
much more beautiful songs and has a far finer voice than I. But the
dust of the journey has got into his throat, so that he will sing to
you in all 'manners' on another occasion."

Then they all begun praising and applauding Friedrich as if he had
actually sung, and some of the masters even thought his voice was finer
than Reinhold's. Herr Vollrad (after another glass) thought, and said,
that Friedrich caught the beautiful German "modes" even better than
Reinhold, who had just a little too much of the Italian school about
him. But Master Martin threw his head back, smote his breast with his
fist till it resounded again, and cried--

"Those are _my_ men--mine, I say! Master Tobias Martin, the Cooper of
Nuernberg's men."

And all the masters nodded their heads, and said, as they savoured the
last drops out of their tall drinking-glasses--

"Aye, aye, it is so! All right! Master Martin's, the Cooper of
Nuernberg's fine, clever men."

At last they all went home to bed; and Master Martin gave each of his
new journeymen a nice bright chamber in his house.

HOW A THIRD JOURNEYMAN CAME TO MASTER MARTIN'S
AND WHAT HAPPENED THEREUPON.

After Friedrich and Reinhold had worked with Master Martin for a week
or two, he observed that, as regarded measurements, rule and compass
work, calculations, and correctness of eye, Reinhold was probably
without a rival. But it was otherwise as concerned work at the bench
with the adze or the mallet. At those Reinhold