red the
magnificent Stradivari to its original integrity, and cleared 150
guineas by its sale. But Schnapps is a humbug at bottom--an
everlasting copyist and manufacturer of dead masters, Italian, German,
and English. He has sold more Amatis in his time than Amati himself
ever made. He knows the secret of the old varnish; he has hidden
stores of old wood--planks of cherry-tree and mountain-ash centuries
old, and worm-eaten sounding-boards of defunct Harpsichords, and
reserves of the close-grained pine hoarded for ages. He has a
miniature printing press, and a fount of the lean-faced,
long-forgotten type, and a stock of the old ribbed paper torn from the
fly-leaves of antique folios; and, of course, he has always on hand a
collection of the most wonderful instruments at the most wonderful
prices, for the professional man or the connoisseur.

"'You vant to py a Pfeedel,' says Schnapps. 'I sall sell you de
pest--dat ish, de pest for the mowny. Vat you sall gif for him?'

"'Well, I can go as far as ten guineas,' says the customer.

"'Ten kinnis is good for von goot Pfeedel; bote besser is tventy,
tirty, feefty kinnis, or von hunder, look you; bote ten kinnis is
goot--you sall see.'

"Schnapps is all simplicity and candour in his dealings. The
probability is, however, that his ten-guinea Fiddle would be fairly
purchased at five, and that you might have been treated to the same
article had you named thirty or forty guineas instead of ten.

"I once asked Schnapps if he knew wherein lay the excellence of the
old Italian instruments.

"'Mein Gott!--if I don't, who de teifil does?'

"Then he went on to inform me that it did not lie in any peculiarity
in the model, though there was something in that; nor in the wood of
the back, though there was something in that; nor in the fine and
regular grain of the pine which formed the belly, though there was
something in that; nor in the position of the grain running precisely
parallel with the strings, though there was something in that; nor in
the sides, nor in the finger-board, nor in the linings, nor in the
bridge, nor in the strings, nor in the waist, though there was
something in all of them; nor yet in the putting together, though
there was much in that.

"'Where does it lie, then, Mr. Schnapps?'

"'Ah, der henker! hang if I know.'

"'Has age much to do with it, think you?'

"'Not mosche. Dere is pad Pfeedels two hunder years ole as vell as
goot vons; and dere is goot