Ebook Salt of the Earth

In 1870, when Germany went to war with France, Gustav Müller was in China. He was a youth of twenty at the time and the only son of his mother, who was a widow. He did not go back to Germany to fight for his country, but stayed on in China achieving prosperity. He became a partner in his firm, and at the age of forty returned to Europe. By this time he had married a lady who, like himself, was German by birth, but who had lived with her parents in China and mainly amongst English people since she was a child. She had one brother, but he had been educated in Germany and had settled in Berlin: so that his sister had not seen him since they were children together in Hongkong.

When the Müllers returned to Europe, Mrs. Müller expressed a wish to visit her brother, who was now a married man with several children older than her own. So they went to Berlin for a short time, and afterwards to Heidelberg, where Mr. Müller's grandmother and mother were still living in an old-fashioned house with a garden full of fruit trees. Their three children were with them, and for years to come talked of Heidelberg and the fruit trees which the old ladies would shake for them till golden plums and ripe pears came tumbling down upon the grass.