I didn’t last a month when I apprenticed with Master Pfriem. My advice is: stay away from that shoemaker! He’s that short, grey-haired fellow you see moving through the crowd with his arms wheeling round as if he were rowing a boat. You know the man. The one with the permanently turned-up nose.

Oh, did you see what just happened? Master Pfriem ran into that girl over there and sent her water pail flying into the air.

Now he’s calling her an idiot! “Could you not see that I was coming up behind you?”

Ha! Master Pfriem. He’d find fault with anybody. If he ever gets to heaven (and that’s highly unlikely) he’ll be correcting God!

Apprentice to Fault-Finding Shoemaker in Master Pfriem, Grimms. Painting “Self-Portrait” by Rembrandt.