Page:Letters from Abroad to Kindred at Home (Volume 1).djvu/177

174 to have as kind a master as was the good knight. He is a master-carpenter, and is just now employed in finishing off the new palace which the Duke of Nassau is building for his duchess, and has twelve subordinates in his service—nine journeymen and three apprentices. To the nine journeymen, he tells me, he has paid, in the last four months, one thousand florins, about eleven dollars a month each, besides feeding them. The apprentices be supports, and gives them a trifle in money. They eat in a back building attached to ours. I asked leave to-day, while (hey were at dinner, to look in upon them. They had clean linen on their table, and everything appeared comfortable. They are allowed three rolls of brown bread for breakfast, and coffee, beer, or schnapps (a mixture with some sort of spirit), whichever they prefer. They have soup, meat, and vegetables for dinner, and soup, bread, butter, and cheese for supper. A Bonn and a half (sixty cents) pays for the meat for their dinner. The best butter is twenty-four kreutzers (eighteen cents) a pound; the rolls a kreutzer each. Vegetables are excessively cheap.

There is a law in Germany compelling an apprentice, when the term of his apprenticeship is completed, to travel a year, to work in different towns, and enrich himself with the improvements in his art. In each town there is an inn for these