Scan 567
The violin: its famous makers and their imitators, 1909
16 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 489. See the scan on archive.org.
1the most wonderful instruments at the most wonderful prices, for the professional man or the connoisseur.
3"'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?'
5"'Well, I can go as far as ten guineas,' says the customer.
7"'Ten kinnis is good for von goot Pfeedel; bote besser is twenty, tirty, feefty kinnis, or von hunder, look you; bote ten kinnis is goot—you sall see.'
9"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.
11"I once asked Schnapps if he knew wherein lay the excellence of the old Italian instruments.
13"'Mein Gott!—if I don't, who de teifil does?'
15"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
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