obability of broken hearts, there can be no question as to the verity
of broken lives. That day, assuredly, the life of Andreas Stoffel was
broken, and it never wholly mended again. For a while even the song of
his birds lost all its sweetness, and seemed to him but a discordant
sound.

Yet even a broken life, until it be snuffed out entirely, must battle in
the world for standing-room. Luckily for Andreas, there was no need for
him to question how his own particular battle should be made. The
shape in which his little store of worldly wealth was cast obviously
determined the lines on which he should seek maintenance. It was plain
that by the rearing and the selling of canary-birds he must gain support
until the time should come (and he hoped that it would come soon) when
he might find release from this earth, where love so soon grows false
and cold.

The rich uncle, who was a kind-hearted man, gave his help in the
matter of finding a shop wherein the canary-bird business might be
advantageously carried on, and gave also the benefit of his commercial
wisdom and knowledge of American ways. And so, with no great difficulty,
Andreas was soon established in a snug little place of his own on the
East Side; where the friendly German speech sounded almost constantly
in his ears, and where the friendly German customs obtained almost as
completely as in his own dear German home. But, after all, the change
was a dismal one. As his unaccustomed nose was assailed by the rank
oil-vapors blown across from Hunter's Point he longed regretfully for
the fresh, aromatic air that the south winds swept up and over his old
home from the pines of the Schwarz-wald; and the contrast was a sorry
one between a home on the slopes of the Harz Mountains and a home in
Avenue B.

Yet had these been his only sorrows, and had he borne them--as he had
hoped to bear them--with Christine, his lot would have been anything
but hard. It was the deep heart-wound that he had suffered that made his
life for many a year a very dreary one; too dreary for him to find
much pleasure even in the singing of his birds. Now and again he met
Christine. At their first meeting--in his uncle's fine parlor over the
fine delicatessen shop, one Sunday afternoon--she was, as she well might
be, confused in her speech and very shamefaced in her ways. Her husband
was with her, quite a prosperous person, so Andreas was told, who
had built up a great business in the pork and sausa