rstand anything about this business?" he asked
in amazement.

"Who is the Marker?" Poor Walther asked, more and more bewildered.

"Were you never before at a singing trial?"

"Not where the judges were craftsmen," Walther answered. He was quite
certain if he knew anything about music, it could not be the kind that
shoe-makers, and boiler makers, and the like were acquainted with.

"Are you a poet?"

"I wish I were," Walther sighed dejectedly.

"Are you then a 'scholar'?"

"Lord, no, I think not--I don't know. What is a 'scholar?"

"Don't know that, and yet expect to become a Mastersinger!" David
cried, in amazement. "Well, now, let me tell you, Sir Knight, no one
gets to be a Mastersinger in a minute! For a full year, Hans Sachs,
our greatest master, has been teaching me the art, and I am not yet
even a 'scholar.'"

Shoemaker's craft and Poet's art,
Daily I learn by the heart.
First, all the leather smooth I hammer,
Consonants then, and vowels I stammer.
Next must the thread be stiff with wax,
Then I must learn it rhymes with Sachs.

David continued to tell of the difficulties of learning from a cobbler
how to become a Mastersinger, though the cobbler was one himself. By
the time David had finished telling Walther about the process of
shoemaking and music making, Walther threw up his hands in despair.

"Defend me from learning--the cobbler's trade," he cried, half
humorously, yet troubled.

"You must learn:

The shortened, long, and over-long tones;
The paper mode, the black-ink mode;
The scarlet, blue, and verdant tones;
The hawthorn bloom, strawhalm, fennel mode:
The tender, the dulcet, the rosy tone;
The passing passion, the forgotten tone;
The rosemary, wallflower mode;
The rainbow mode and the nightingale mode
The English tin, the cinnamon mode,
Fresh pomegranates, green linden-bloom mode;
The lonely gormandizer mode,
The skylark, the snail, the barking tone;
And the honey flower, the marjoram mode;
The lion's skin, true pelican mode,
The bright glittering thread mode."

"Dreadful, dreadful," cried poor Walther. "What an endless medley of
tones!"

"Oh, those are only the titles; after that comes the singing--and it
has to be according to rules, remember."

Walther groaned. David at once outlined some of the rules; they
appeared quite hopeless.

"Why no one in the world could mee