ocess 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 off the cream from time to time as the needs of the German
Empire demanded.

This began to look reasonable. It certainly began to account for the
German cream which I had encountered and marveled over in so many hotels
and restaurants. But a thought struck me--

"Why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup of milk and his
own cask of water, and mix them, without making a government matter of
it?'

"Where could he get a cask large enough to contain the right proportion
of water?"

Very true. It was plain that the Englishman had studied the matter from
all sides. Still I thought I might catch him on one point; so I asked
him why the modern empire did not make the nation's cream in the
Heidelberg Tun, instead of leaving it to rot away unused. But he
answered as one prepared--

"A patient and diligent examination of the modern German cream had
satisfied me that they do not use the Great Tun now, because they have
got a BIGGER one hid away somewhere. Either that is the case or they
empty the spring milkings into the mountain torrents and then skim the
Rhine all summer."

There is a museum of antiquities in the Castle, and among its most
treasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected with German history.
There are hundreds of these, and their dates stretch back through many
centuries. One of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand of a
successor of Charlemagne, in the year 896. A signature made by a hand
which vanished out of this life near a thousand years ago, is a more
impressive thing than even a ruined castle. Luther's wedding-ring was
shown me; also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era, and an
early bootjack. And there was a plaster cast of the head of a man who
was assassinated about sixty years ago. The stab-wounds in the face
were duplicated with unpleasant fidelity. One or two real hairs still
remained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast. That trifle seemed to
almost change the counterfeit into a corpse.

There are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless; some of
great interest, some of none at all. I bought a couple--one a gorgeous
duke of the olden time, and the other a comely blue-eyed damsel,
a princess, maybe. I bought them to start a portrait-gallery of my
ancestors with. I paid a dolla