In short, everybody, man, woman, and child, drank to their heart’s content. Drinking formed part of the education of youth. “Now, let us see,” said the fond parent to his little son, “let us see what you can do. Bring him a half-measure;” and later on, “Bring him a measure.”[188] And men told one another in high glee how they had succeeded in making all their guests drunk the evening before, and how long each had managed to hold out before he succumbed. Drunken tournaments were held, and Hans Sachs, the national poet, gives an account of one of them which he had witnessed, where twelve “beer heroes” succeeded in drinking from “pots and cans” a tun of beer in six hours! Of course, it was necessary to introduce something like order into this drinking world; and just as we have found religious beliefs, and laws, and ceremonies accumulate through ages, and handed down by tradition until the master-mind appeared to codify the whole and reduce it to writing, so “Jus Potandi” was the grand outcome of the wise drinking legislation of generations of topers. As already remarked, whether it be a serious production or merely a satire, its significance remains the same. It described the liquors of the age, the beers especially. Rostocker, Hamburger, Dantzger duppelbier (equal to our XX), Preussing, Brunswick mumme, Hanoverian broyhan, English beer, which, along with many more, were, we are told, infinitely preferable to such rubbish as Wittemburg cuckoo, Buffalo, or “_Leipzig herb-flavoured body-rending Rastrum_,” whatever that may have been.[189] It must have been a highly edifying spectacle a mediæval German drinking-feast, comprising a mixed company of guests, who acknowledged and obeyed the drinking-code (_Zech-recht_). There was no promiscuous hobnobbing, and caste was duly respected then as now. Nobles were not permitted to drink with tradespeople, but they might raise their glass to a student, and he in like manner might condescend to notice a tradesman, for there was no knowing of what advantage such a recognition might be to a student.[190] A case is cited where a merchant (pedlar, we presume) actually gave a poor “studiosus” a pair of beautiful silk stockings the morning after a carouse, for which he had expressed a longing during the entertainment. Young maidens were permitted to drink platonically with virtuous young men, but they are warned in droll and not very modest terms against “pseudo-prophêtes,” who are “lupi rapaces” in sheep’s clothing, and the evils of drinking “sisterhood” with such ravening wolves are duly and circumstantially set forth in the code.[191] One clause is devoted specially to the expressions in vogue amongst ladies, who may find it necessary, whilst at table, to protect themselves against the too gross familiarities of their gallant neighbours.[192]