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The cross-legged tailor plying his needle on his raised platform; the cobbler in the pauses of beating the leather on his lap-stone; and the field-laborer as he rested on his spade; discussed with serene and satisfied assurance problems, before the contemplation of which, the ripest learning and highest order of mind had veiled their faces.
Sachs interrupts the serenader, who is an ill-natured clown, by lustily shouting a song in which he seeks also to give warning of knowledge of her intentions to Eva, whose departure with the knight had been interrupted by the cobbler when he came out of his shop to work in the cool of the evening; but he finally agrees to listen to Beckmesser on condition that he be permitted to mark each error in the composition by striking his lap-stone.
Like true American pioneers, they adapted themselves to circumstances with fortitude and skill. Linn says: "When a halt occurred, a shoemaker might be seen looking for a stone to serve as a lap-stone in his repair work, or a gunsmith mending a rifle, or a weaver at a wheel or loom.
Uncle Tim used to be the village shoemaker, hammering away at his lap-stone in that little shop with the red eaves, as contentedly as if he owned a kingdom. He always had a pleasant smile and a merry story for his customers, and it was worth twice the money one paid him, to see his sunshiny face and hear his hearty laugh. But the light of Uncle Tim's eyes was his little daughter Kitty.
Entering the narrow passage from which his shop door opened, and hearing him hammering away at a sole, he stood and unfolded his treasure, then drew a low sigh from her with his bow, and awaited the result. He heard the lap-stone fall thundering on the floor, and, like a spider from his cavern, Dooble Sanny appeared in the door, with the bend-leather in one hand, and the hammer in the other.
The humorous consequences can be imagined. Beckmesser becomes enraged at Sachs, sings more and more falsely, until Sachs is occupied in beating a veritable tattoo on his lap-stone.
While his fingers were busy at his lap-stone he was thinking not of the coarse boots and shoes he was making, but of little Kitty how he meant to send her to school how he meant she should learn to read and write, and know a great deal more than ever he did, when he was young and how he meant to save up all his money in the old yarn stocking, till he got enough to put in the bank for Kitty, so that when he died she needn't go drifting round the world, trying to earn her bread and butter among cold, stony-hearted strangers.
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