The Wagner Story Book (Paperback)

Excerpt: ...at once that what the knight wants is to sing for the prize to-morrow. Now, the rule is, you remember, that nobody but a master may even try for the prize; so the jealous town clerk resolves that he will keep the young man from becoming a master. And it happens, by good luck for him and bad luck for the knight, that it is his turn to-day to take the chalk and mark the mistakes that are made in singing by anybody who tries to prove himself worthy to be a master. "When the masters are all met, the goldsmith makes a little speech, and tells them how the prize is to be given to-morrow. They are to decide who wins, but his daughter is to judge too. She may choose none without their voice, but she may refuse any. That is no more than fair, of course. No girl would like to be married to a man just because the lines of his poetry came out right when somebody else counted them. Yet the masters all argue and dispute and suggest about the rules; but in the end they agree to do just what the goldsmith says, since they cannot do anything else. "Now comes the trial of the young knight who wants to be a master. The town clerk goes behind a curtain, with his slate and his chalk, and you may be sure he does not forget his promise to himself that the knight shall fail. Then the young man stands up in the midst of them all and sings his song. A happy, free, beautiful song it is. It tells first how the spring came into the forest and awakened the trees and brought the flowers. Then it tells how the spring came into the young man's own heart, as you know I told you it ought to do, and how it made him sing of love; and that is quite right too, though perhaps I forgot to say so before. "But happy and beautiful as the song is, it is scarcely begun before the most dreadful scratching of the chalk is heard behind the curtain. All the masters begin to shake their heads, too, for this knight is bold enough to make his own song in his own way, and he knows and cares no more...