d speedily have been ejected. I
confess I envied them that mere right of admission into the well-dressed
world, and sorrowed over my own exclusion as though it had been
inflicted on me as a punishment.

This jealous feeling met no encouragement from Hans. The old man had no
rancour of any kind in his nature. He had no sense of discontent with
his condition, nor any desire to change it. Counting staves seemed
to him a very fitting way to occupy existence; and he knew of many
occupations that were less pleasant and less wholesome. Rags, for
instance, for the paper-mill, or hides, in both of which Herr Ignaz
dealt, Hans would have seriously disliked; but staves were cleanly, and
smelt fresh and sweetly of the oak-wood they came from; and there was
something noble in their destiny--to form casks and hogsheads for the
rich wines of France and Spain--which he was fond of recalling; and so
would he say, "Without you and me, boy, or those like us, they 'd have
no vats nor barrels for the red grape-juice."

While he thus talked to me, trying to invest our humble calling with
what might elevate it in my eyes, I struggled often with myself whether
I should not tell him the story of my life,--in what rank I had lived,
to what hopes of fortune I had been reared. Would this knowledge have
raised me in the old man's esteem, or would it have estranged him from
me? that was the question. How should I come through the ordeal of his
judgment,--higher or lower? A mere chance decided for me what all my
pondering could not resolve. Hans came home one night with a little book
in his hand, a present for me. It was a French grammar, and, as he told
me, the key to all knowledge.

"The French are the great people of the world," said he, "and till you
know their tongue, you can have no real insight into learning." There
was a "younker," once under him in the yard, who, just because he could
read and write French, was now a cashier, with six hundred florins'
salary. "When you have worked hard for three months, we 'll look out for
a master, Owen."

"But I know it already, Hanserl," said I, proudly. "I speak it even
better than I speak German, and Italian too! Ay, stare at me, but it's
true. I had masters for these, and for Greek and Latin; and I was taught
to draw, and to sing, and to play the piano, and I learned how to ride
and to dance."

"Just like a born gentleman," broke in Hans.

"I was, and I am, a born gentleman; don't shake your hea