When he was twenty years old he thought he knew London well enough to engage in business on his own account. His father would not help him, but he had £2000 left him by his mother, and with this he engaged in various speculations, the thought of which now moves him to hearty laughter. He wanted to induce the English to smoke the German students' long pipes and to use washable india-rubber playing cards. These and other such brilliant ideas made a very serious inroad on his capital. He held, amongst other agencies, one for a manufacturer of preserves, and this brought him into touch with German provision shops. These shops were all tucked away in little side streets in the Soho district, and Mr Appenrodt thought that there would be a good opening for German _delicatessen_ if it was possible to show them in better premises and with more appetising surroundings. He opened in a basement at the corner of Lombard Street and Gracechurch Street a shop, in a room about twenty feet square. At that time there were no light refreshment places in the City except the A.B.C. shops, and Mr Appenrodt soon had a large clientele for his little shop. He saw that there was a fortune to be made in catering for the wants of the middle classes, but before he experimented on a larger scale he went back to Germany to serve his one year of military service, having sold his little business to a man who transferred it to some licensed premises and made a fortune by it. When Mr Appenrodt came back, having completed his term of military service, he found that his luck in the City had petered out, for not one of the shops he opened in succession proved to be a success. The last straw was a shop in the Commercial Road, which seemed likely to eat up all the funds he had left. But it was during this last attempt that his luck turned. He engaged a young lady as shop assistant, and she brought him good luck and success; and his love story, for it was a love story, led up to the right ending of all love stories, a happy marriage. And he backed his luck, for he and his wife made a last bold bid for fortune by taking a shop in the West End, at the corner of Coventry Street and Whitcomb Street. This venture proved an instantaneous success. Mr Appenrodt and his wife at first did all the work themselves, and their business hours were from nine A.M. until one the next morning. They had no afternoons or evenings off, and worked all and every Sunday. Easier times came, assistant after assistant was engaged, and one branch after another was opened. Not all of these proved successes, but in spite of minor set-backs, the firm of two continued to flourish more and more, and has now the big shop and restaurant at Coventry Street, eight branches in various parts of London and a big depot in Paris. Mr Appenrodt has refused many offers to turn his undertaking into a company. He looks on his five hundred employees as his family, and is not willing to put them at the mercy of strangers.