quite free and gently lifted off, the table is turned about
for a moment and attention is directed to the interior. The two men
look at all the parts with very different eyes. One with eager
expectancy, critical eye and much experience, sees at a glance much
that intensely interests him, confirms certain views of the old methods
of working, whether the wood was white and new when the violin was
constructed, how a little of the precious material enveloping the whole
structure had dropped through the sound holes during the process of
varnishing; watches the form of the drops whether they indicate a thin
or a thick solution of the resinous particles, whether these have
cracked or blistered in the Milanese or Venetian manner, whether they
show signs of having set at once or remained soft and running for a
time; the corner and end blocks, their material, and whether the same
as those linings let into the middle ones and their being finished off
before or after the placing in position. The joint of the back too,
and if there remained any evidence of system in working different to
what we moderns would do? These and other queries passed rapidly
through the mind of the dealer and connoisseur, more of the latter than
the former, and that is why he was not more successful by many degrees
than any others of the fraternity. To be a dealer in the strictly
business sense of the term, a number of valuable violins must to him
be no more than potatoes in a basket to a greengrocer, _i.e._, what
they appear worth.

His assistant--a good accurate mechanic in almost all respects, sees
in this unearthed "old master," "gem of antiquity," or _chef d'oeuvre_
of Italian art, nothing but the interior of a dirty brown box with a
rolling ball of fluff resting in one of the corners.

There are perhaps few things more disappointing than the interior of
a violin when opened for the purpose of repairing. Be it a matchless
gem of Cremona's art or an old and common Tyrolese worth but a few
shillings, the difference to an ordinary observer is so slight as to
be uninteresting, indeed to connoisseurs of experience there is not
the variation sufficient to excite curiosity to the extent of opening
the instrument on that ground solely. The raw and unvarnished wood,
with the parts between the threads swollen from damp, begrimed and
repeatedly washed by repairers, presents anything but a pleasing
spectacle even when the interior of a fine "Strad" or Joseph is l