at just as you would
clasp this beautiful dream-image to your heart with loving arms, it
flies away coyly on the light clouds of the morning, scared at
the noise and uproar of the day, and you gaze at its vanishing
after-shimmer with eyes filled with burning tears. Hard beset by the
surges of the life around you, you wake suddenly from the beautiful
dream, and all that remains to you is the deep, endless longing which
penetrates your heart with thrills of sweet emotion. Feelings such
as those, dear reader, have at all times filled the breast of him
who writes those pages for you, when his way has led him to the
world-renowned town of Nuernberg. Delaying before the wondrous fabric
of the fountain in the market-place, or contemplating the monument in
St. Sebald, or the Pyx in St. Laurenz, or Albert Duerer's works of deep
meaning in the Rathhaus, he has yielded himself wholly to the sweet
dreams which took him back into the midst of the glories of the old
Imperial free-town; and many a picture of the doughty burgher-life of
those old days, when art and handicraft held out hands of help and
friendship to each other in eager emulation, has risen up in clearness,
and impressed itself on his mind with a peculiar pleasure and serenity
of cheerfulness. Let it please you, dear reader, to have one of those
pictures displayed to you. Perhaps you may look upon it with a sense of
pleasure and satisfaction, or even with genial smiles; perhaps you may
feel at home in Master Martin's house, and linger gladly amongst his
vats and barrels. At all events, may that come to pass which the writer
from the depths of his heart most cordially desires.

HOW MASTER MARTIN WAS ELECTED ONE OF THE CHIEFS
OF HIS GUILD, AND DULY RETURNED THANKS FOR THAT HONOUR.

On the first of May of the year one thousand five hundred and eighty,
the Honourable Guild of Coopers in the free Imperial town of Nuernberg
held its solemn annual meeting, according to use and wont. A short time
previously one of its "Vorsteher," or presidents, had been carried to
his grave; so that it was necessary to appoint his successor. The
choice fell upon Master Martin, and, in truth, no one could equal him
in strong and elegant building of vats; nor did any one understand as
he did the keeping of wine in cellar; for which reason he had the
grandest lords and gentry for his patrons, and lived in the utmost
comfort; nay, in absolute wealth, so that the worthy town