But little Louis, the youngest of the brood, did not develop like his
brothers and sisters. His chest was narrow. His muscles flabby. His legs
thin. He could not lift any weight to speak of. A change of weather
threw him in bed. After he was doctored by the mother with roots and
herbs the medicus was called in. It happened at least twice a week. His
bills were even larger than a plumber's. There never was a week in which
Louis did not cause a large extra expense. As little and small as he
was, he was the dead weight that dragged them all down. They had to
economize for his sake. Leberwurst became a luxury instead of a staple
article on the table of the Burg family. And just because Louis was so
puny and weak the mother and the father loved him more than any of the
other children. It was as if the whole family lived for nothing else
than to expiate the sin of Louis's ailments.
When Louis was fourteen years old, he did not don overalls. He continued
school. He had the best of clothes and the best of foods. In summer time
he was sent to the mountains with his mother to take care of him. Louis
entered High School. Anton, his oldest brother, married but remained
with the firm, drawing a weekly salary--a smaller one than he could have
gotten elsewhere. Then Peter married and began to draw a weekly salary.
But neither Anton nor Peter were as husky and strong as they might have
been. They had worked a little harder and fed a little less well than it
was good for them. They had started work too soon and endured too many
privations because of Louis's continual expensive existence.
From High School Louis, still nurtured and doctored, entered college. He
was still too weak to work. His older sisters, rosy, carnate Gretchens,
withered away working hard and living loveless lives because of the
expense of Louis's upkeep.
Louis, as a college man, began to look down upon all of them. In natty
suit and clean linen, supplied with money, as much as he wanted because
they dared not contradict the "poor sick boy," he associated only with
the gentlemen of the college. His brothers were just ordinary
workingmen; ill mannered and ignorant. The time came when father Hans
was called to his Maker. The Burgmillers were not of a long-living
stock. And when the will was opened, everything belonged to the "poor
weak Louis, who was not able to work like his strong brothers."
"Poor weak Louis" became the owner of the Burg & Burg establishment
founded on the sweat of four generations. And because he was too weak to
work himself, his broad shouldered brothers had sunken cheeks, bent
backs, while Louis, the prosperous Louis Burg, exhibits his flashy
clothes and his learning.
SOCIALISTS! BEWARE OF MRS. ROSENBERG
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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