The Project Gutenberg EBook of An Idyl Of The East Side, by Thomas A. Janvier

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Title: An Idyl Of The East Side
1891

Author: Thomas A. Janvier

Illustrator: W. T. Smedley

Release Date: December 10, 2007 [EBook #23809]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AN IDYL OF THE EAST SIDE ***

Produced by David Widger

AN IDYL OF THE EAST SIDE

By Thomas A. Janvier

Copyright, 1891, by Harper & Brothers

In the matter of raising canary-birds--at once strong of body and of
note, tamed to associate with humanity on rarely friendly terms, and
taught to sing with a sweetness nothing short of heavenly--Andreas
Stoffel was second to none. And this was not by any means surprising,
for he had been born (and for its saintly patron had been christened)
close by the small old town of Andreasberg: which stands barely
within the verge of the Black Forest, on the southern declivity of the
Harz--and which, while famous for its mines, is renowned above all
other cities for the excellence of the bird songsters which there and
thereabouts are raised.

Canary-birds had been the close companions of this good Andreas through
all the fifty years of his lifetime. They had sung their sweet song of
rejoicing at his birth--when the storks had brought him one day, while
his father was far underground at work in the mines, and was vastly well
pleased, when he came home all grimy at night, to find what a brave
boy God had sent him by these winged messengers. They had sung over his
cradle as his mother, knitting, rocked it in the midst of the long
patch of sunlight that came through the low, wide window of the
_bauernhaus_--the comfortable home with high-peaked roof, partly
thatched and partly shingled, and with great drooping eaves, that was
nooked snugly on the warm southern slope of the Andreasberg beside a
little stream.

[Illustration: High-peaked roof, partly thatched 258]

They had sung him awake many and many a bright summer morning; and one
of his tenderest memories of the time when he was a very little boy--and
was put to bed, as little boys should be, at sundown--was of their
faint, irregular, sleep