-in-law must be of _my_ trade; for
my trade I hold to be the finest trade there is in the world. Do you
think we've nothing to do but to fix the staves into the trestles
(hoops), so that the cask may hold together? Marry, it's a fine thing
and an admirable thing that our handiwork requires a previous knowledge
of the way in which that noble blessing of Heaven, good wine, must be
kept and managed, that it may acquire strength and flavour so as to go
through all our veins and warm our blood like the true spirit of life!
And then as for the construction of the casks--if we are to turn out a
successful piece of work, must we not first draw out our plans with
compass and rule? We must be arithmeticians and geometricians of no
mean attainments, how else can we adapt the proportion and size of the
cask to the measure of its contents? Ay, sir, my heart laughs in my
body when we've bravely laboured at the staves with jointer and adze
and have gotten a brave cask in the vice; and then when my journeymen
swing their mallets and down it comes on the drivers clipp! clapp!
clipp! clapp!--that's merry music for you; and there stands your
well-made cask. And of a verity I may look a little proudly about me
when I take my marking-tool in my hand and mark the sign of my
handiwork, that is known and honoured of all respectable wine-masters,
on the bottom of the cask. You spoke of house-building, my good sir.
Well, a beautiful house is in truth a glorious piece of work, but if I
were a house-builder and went past a house I had built, and saw a dirty
fellow or good-for-nothing rascal who had got possession of it looking
down upon me from the bay-window, I should feel thoroughly ashamed,--I
should feel, purely out of vexation and annoyance, as if I should like
to pull down and destroy my own work. But nothing like that can happen
with the structures I build. Within them there comes and lives once for
all nothing but the purest spirit on earth--good wine. God prosper my
handiwork!"

"That's a fine eulogy," said Spangenberg, "and honestly and well meant.
It does you honour to think so highly of your craft; but--do not get
impatient if I keep harping upon the same string--now if a patrician
really came and sued for your daughter? When a thing is brought right
home to a man it often looks very different from what he thought it
would." "Why, i' faith," cried Master Martin somewhat vehemently, "why,
what else could I do but make a polite bow and s