got the first copies of the Communist Manifesto at Cologne. Only a day or two before that we had news of the outbreak of the Revolution in Paris. I have still my copy of the Manifesto which Karl sent me from Paris.

"You see, he had been expelled from Brussels by order of the Government. Prussia had requested this, so Karl wrote me, and he was arrested and ordered to leave Belgium at once. So he went at once to Paris. Only a week before that the Provisional Government had sent him an official invitation to come back to the city from which Guizot had expelled him. It was like a conqueror that he went, you may imagine.

"Boy, you can never understand what we felt in those days. Things are not so any more. We all thought that the day of our victory was surely nigh. Karl had made us believe that when things started in France the proletariat of all Europe would awaken: 'When the Gallican cock crows the German workers will rise,' he used to say. And now the cock's crowing had been heard! The Revolution was successful in France—so we thought—and the people were planting trees of liberty along the boulevards.

"Here in England, too, the Spirit of the Revolution was abroad with her flaming torch. The Chartists had come together, and every day we expected to hear that the monarchy had been overthrown and a Social Republic established. Of course, we knew that Chartism was a 'bread and butter question' at the bottom, and that the Chartists' cause was ours.

"Well, now that we had heard the Gallican cock, we wanted to get things started in Germany, too. Every night we held meetings at the club in Cologne to discuss the situation. Some of us wanted to begin war at once. You see, the Revolution was in our blood like strong wine: we were drunk with the spirit, lad.

"When Karl wrote that we must wait, that we must have patience, there was great disappointment. We thought that we should begin at once, and there were some who said that Karl was afraid, but I knew that they were wrong, and told them so. There was a fierce discussion at the meeting one night over a letter which I had received from Karl, and which he wanted me to read to the members.

"George Herwegh was in Paris, so the letter said, and was trying hard to raise a legion of German workingmen to march into the Fatherland and begin the fight. This, Karl said, was a terrible mistake. It was useless, to begin with, for what could such a legion of tailors and cigarmakers and weavers do against the Prussian army? It was plain that the legion would be annihilated. Besides, it would hurt the cause in another way by taking out of Paris thousands of good revolutionists who were needed there.

"'Tell the comrades,' he wrote, 'that it is not a question of cowardice or fear, but of wisdom. It takes more courage to live for the long struggle than to go out and be shot.' He wanted the comrades to wait patiently and to do all they could to persuade their friends in Paris not to follow Herwegh's advice. Most of the Germans in Paris followed Karl's advice, but a few followed Herwegh and marched into Baden later on, to be scattered by the regular troops as chaff is scattered by the wind.

"The German comrades in Paris sent us a special manifesto, which Karl wrote, and we were asked to distribute it among the working people. That would be a good way to educate the workers, Karl wrote to our committee, but I tell you it seemed a very small thing to do in those trying times, and it didn't satisfy the comrades who were demanding more radical revolutionary action. Why, even I seemed to forget Karl's advice for a little while.

"On the 13th of March—you'll remember that was the day on which more than a hundred thousand Chartists gathered on Kennington Common—the revolution broke out in Vienna. Then things began to move in Cologne, too. As soon as the news came from Vienna, August von Willich, who had been an artillery officer, led a big mob right into the Cologne Council Chamber. I was in the mob and shouted as loud as anybody. We demanded that the authorities should send a petition to the King, in the name of the city, demanding freedom and constitutional government.

"And then on the 18th, the same day that saw the people of Berlin fighting behind barricades in the streets—a great multitude of us Cologne men marched through the streets, led by Professor Gottfried Kinkel, singing the Marseillaise and carrying the forbidden flag of revolution, the black, red and gold tricolor."

"And where was he—Marx—during all this time?" asked the Young Comrade.

"In Paris with Engels. We thought it strange that he should be holding aloof from the great struggle, and even I began to lose faith in him. He had told us that the crowing of the Gallican cock would be the sign for the revolution to begin, yet he was silent. It was not till later that I learned from his own lips that he saw from the start that the revolution would be crushed; that the workers opportunity would not come until later.

IV

"He told me that when he came to Cologne with Engels. That was either the last of April or the beginning of May, I forget which. My wife rushed in one evening and said that she had seen Karl going up the street. I had heard that he was expected, but thought it would not be for several days. So when Barbara said that she had seen him on the street, I put on my things in a big hurry and rushed off to the club. There was a meeting that night, and I felt pretty sure that Karl would get there.

FERDINAND LASSALLE.ToList

"When the meeting was more than half through, I heard a noise in the back of the hall and turned to see Karl and Engels making their way to the platform. There was another man with them, a young fellow, very slender and about five feet six in height, handsome as Apollo and dressed like a regular dandy. I had never seen this young man before, but from what I had heard and read I knew that it must be Ferdinand Lassalle.

"They both spoke at the meeting. Lassalle's speech was full of fire and poetry, but Karl spoke very quietly and slowly. Lassalle was like a great actor declaiming, Karl was like a teacher explaining the rules of arithmetic to a lot of schoolboys."

"And did you meet Lassalle, too?" asked the Young Comrade in awed tones.

"Aye, that night and many times after that. Karl greeted me warmly and introduced me to Lassalle. Then we went out for a drink of lager beer—just us four—Karl, Lassalle, Engels and me. They told me that they had come to start another paper in the place of the one that had been suppressed five years before. Money had been promised to start it, Karl was to be the chief editor and Engels his assistant. The new paper was to be called the Neue Rhenische Zeitung and Freiligrath, George Weerth, Lassalle, and many others, were to write for it. So we drank a toast to the health and prosperity of the new paper.

"Well, the paper came out all right, and it was not long before Karl's attacks upon the government brought trouble upon it. The middle class