LUTHER BURBANK 



small ducal estate on the borders of the Black 

 Forest. The estate included the free Hanseatic 

 city of Liineburg, and was large enough to have 

 some significance in German politics if undivided. 

 But the brothers realized that if each were to 

 claim a share in the estate its divided fragments 

 would have little importance either severally or 

 collectively. 



The brothers were all talented and ambitious 

 men, but they had a sense of family obligation 

 that took precedence over their several ambi- 

 tions. So they held a family conclave and de- 

 cided that only one of their number should marry. 

 The lot fell on the sixth brother, who accordingly 

 chose a wife and in due course had a family of 

 children. The remaining brothers worked and 

 warred in the interests of the family estate with 

 no reward except the consciousness that they had 

 added prestige to the family name. 



The children of the sixth brother made among 

 themselves the same compact that their father 

 and uncles had made. The duty of transmitting 

 the family name devolved upon one Ernest 

 Augustus, Bishop of Osnabriick. In that day an 

 ecclesiastic might be a warrior as well, and the 

 growing influence and success of the Bishop of 

 Osnabriick enabled him to win for his wife a very 

 extraordinary woman, Sophia of Palatine. The 

 son born of this union inherited the original es- 

 tate with sundry accretions, and his mother be- 

 lieved him destined for great things. 



But a brother of the Osnabriick Bishop had 

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