And it's oaks we want, not mushrooms.'"

"How like Marx that was, Hans," said the Young Comrade then, "how patient and far-seeing! And what did Lassalle think of that?"

"He never understood Karl, I think. Anyhow, Karl told me that Lassalle ceased to be his friend after that meeting. There was no quarrel, you understand, only Lassalle realized that he and Karl were far apart in their views. 'Lassalle is a clever man all right,' Karl used to say, 'but he wants twelve o'clock at eleven, like an impatient child.' And there's lots of folks like Lassalle in that respect, my lad; folks that want oaks to grow in a night like mushrooms.

"Well, I stayed in the International until the very last, after the Hague Congress when it was decided to make New York the headquarters. That was a hard blow to me, lad. It looked to me as if Karl had made a mistake. I felt that the International was practically killed when the General Council was moved to America, and told Karl so. But he knew that as well as I did, only he couldn't help himself.

"'Yes, Hans, I'm afraid you're right. The International can't amount to much under the circumstances. But it had to be, Hans, it had to be. My health is very poor, and I'm about done for, so far as fighting is concerned. I simply can't keep on fighting Bakunin and his crowd, Hans, and if I drop the fight the International will pass into Bakunin's control. And I'd rather see the organization die in America than live with Bakunin at the head; it's better so, better so, Hans.' And it was then, when I heard him talk like that, and saw how old-looking he had grown in a few months, that I knew we must soon lose Karl."

VII

"But he did not die soon—he lived more than ten years after that, Hans," said the Young Comrade. "And ten years is a good long time."

"Ach, ten years! But what sort of years were they? Tell me that," demanded old Hans with trembling voice. "Ten years of sickness and misery—ten years of perdition, that's what they were, my lad! Didn't I see him waste away like a plant whose roots are gnawed by the worms? Didn't I see his frame shake to pieces almost when that cough took hold of him? Aye, didn't I often think that I'd be glad to hear that he was dead—glad for his own sake, to think that he was out of pain at last?

"Yes, he lived ten years, but he was dying all the while. He must have been in pain pretty nearly all the time, every minute an agony! 'Oh, I'd put an end to it all, Hans, if I didn't have to finish Capital,' he said to me once as we walked over Hampstead Heath, he leaning upon my arm. 'It's Hell to suffer so, year after year, but I must finish that book. Nothing I've ever done means so much as that to the movement, and nobody else can do it. I must live for that, even though every breath is an agony.'

"But he didn't live to finish his task, after all. It was left for Engels to put the second and third volumes in shape. A mighty good thing it was for the movement that there was an Engels to do it, I can tell you. Nobody else could have done it. But Engels was like a twin brother to Karl. Some of the comrades were a bit jealous sometimes, and used to call Karl and Engels the 'Siamese twins,' but that made no difference to anybody. If it hadn't been for Engels Karl wouldn't have lived so long as he did, and half his work would never have been done. I never got so close to the heart of Engels as I did to Karl, but I loved him for Karl's sake, and because of the way he always stood by Karl through thick and thin.

"I can't bear to tell about the last couple of years—how I used to find Karl sick abed in one room and his wife, the lovely Jenny, in another room tortured by cancer. Terrible it was, and I used to go away from the house hoping that I might hear they were both dead and out of their misery forever. Only Engels seemed to think that Karl would get better. He got mad as a hatter when I said one day that Karl couldn't live. But when Jenny died Engels said to me after the funeral, 'It's all over with Marx now, friend Fritzsche; his life is finished, too.' And I knew that Engels spoke the truth.

"And then Karl died. He died sitting in his arm chair, about three o'clock in the afternoon of the fourteenth of March, 1883. I heard the news that evening from Engels and went over to the house in Maitland Park Road, and that night I saw him stretched out upon the bed, the old familiar smile upon his lips. I couldn't say a word to Engels or to poor Eleanor Marx—I could only press their hands in silence and fight to keep back the sobs and tears.