in
boots that could compare with his own. "They don't know," he was
accustomed to add, "and they have never learned it in all their life,
how such a shoe is to be made so that the firmament of the nails shall
fit well on the soles and contain the proper amount of iron, so as to
render the shoe hard on the outside, so that no flint, however sharp,
can be felt through, and so that it on its inside fits the foot as snug
and soft as a glove."

The shoemaker had a large ledger made for himself in which he entered
all goods he had manufactured, adding the names of those who had
furnished the materials and of those who had bought the finished goods,
together with a brief remark about the quality of the product. Footgear
of the same kind bore their continuous numbers, and the book lay in the
large drawer of his shop.

Even if the beautiful daughter of the Millsdorf dyer did not take a step
outside her parents' home, and even though she visited neither friends
nor relatives, yet the shoemaker of Gschaid knew how to arrange it so
that she saw him from afar when she walked to church, when she was in
her garden, and when she looked out upon the meadows from the windows of
her room. On account of this unceasing spying the dyer's wife by dint of
her long and persevering prayers had brought it about that her obstinate
husband yielded and that the shoemaker--as he had, in fact, become a
better man--led the beautiful and wealthy Millsdorf girl home to
Gschaid as his wife. However, the dyer was a man who meant to have his
own way. The right sort of man, he said, ought to ply his trade in a
manner to prosper and ought, therefore, to be able to maintain his wife,
children, himself, and his servants, to keep house and home in good
condition, and yet save a goodly amount--which savings were, after all,
the main aids to honor and dignity in the world. Therefore, he said, his
daughter would receive nothing from home but an excellent outfit; all
else it was and remained the duty of the husband to provide. The dyeing
works in Millsdorf and the farming he carried on were a dignified and
honorable business by themselves which had to exist for their own sake.
All property belonging to them had to serve as capital, for which reason
he would not give away any part of them. But when he, the dyer, and his
wife, were deceased, then both the dye-works and the farm in Millsdorf
would fall to their only daughter, the shoemaker's wife in Gschaid, and
she