ecially, much more than any of her other wooers, how were it then?"

Master Martin answered, drawing himself up, and throwing back his head:

"'Show me,' I should say, 'show me, my good young sir, the two-fudder
cask that you have built as your masterpiece.' And if he couldn't do
that I should open the door politely, and beg him, as civilly as I
could, to try his luck elsewhere."

Spangenberg resumed:

"Suppose the young fellow said, 'I cannot show you a small-scale piece
of work such as you speak of; but come with me to the market-place, and
look at that stately building, reaching its pinnacles proudly up to the
skies. That is my masterpiece.'"

"Ah, my good sir!" Martin interrupted impatiently; "what is the good of
your taking all this trouble to alter my determination. My son-in-law
shall belong to my own craft, and to no other; for I look upon my craft
as being the most glorious that exists on earth. Do you suppose that
all that is necessary to make a cask hold together is to fit the hoops
on to the staves? Ah! ha! The glory and the beauty of our craft is that
it presupposes a knowledge of the preservation and the nursing of that
most precious of heaven's gifts--the noble wine, that so it may ripen,
and penetrate us with its strength and sweetness, a glowing spirit of
life. Then there is the build of the cask itself. If the build is to be
successful, we have to measure and calculate all the curves, and the
other dimensions, with rule and compass with the utmost accuracy.
Geometers and arithmeticians we must be, that we may compute the
proportions and the capacities of our casks. Ah, good sir, I can
tell you my very heart laughs within my body when I see a fair,
well-proportioned cask laid on to the end-stool, the staves all
beautifully finished off with the riving knife and the broad-axe, and
the men set to with the mallets, and 'clipp, clapp' ring; the strokes
of the driver. Ha! ha! that is merry music. There stands then the work,
perfect; and well may I look round me with a dash of pride when I take
my marking-iron and mark it with my own trade-mark on the head of the
cask--my own mark, known and respected by all genuine vineyard-masters
in the land. You spoke of architects, dear sir. Very good; a grand,
stately house is a fine work beyond doubt. But if I were an architect,
and passed by one of my works, and saw some dirty-minded creature, some
good-for-nothing, despicable wretch who had happened to become the