"Poor Jenny! She was so grateful whenever I brought Karl a box of cigars. 'So long as he must smoke, friend Fritzsche, it is better that he should have something decent to smoke. The cheap trash he smokes is bad for him, I'm sure.' She knew, poor thing, that the poverty he endured for the great Cause was killing Karl by inches, as you might say. And I knew it, too, laddie, and it made my heart bleed."
"Ah, he was a martyr, Hans—a martyr to the cause of liberty. And 'the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church,' always and everywhere," said the Young Comrade.
VI
Old Hans was silent for a few seconds. He gazed at the photograph above his bench like one enraptured. The Young Comrade kept silent, too, watching old Hans. A curious smile played about the old man's face. It was he who broke the silence at length.
"Of course, you've heard about the International, lad? Karl had that picture taken just about the time that the International was started. Always promised me a picture he had, for years and years. And when he brought me that one Sunday he seemed half ashamed of himself, as if he thought it was too sentimental a thing for a serious man to do. 'You'll soon get tired looking at it, Hans,' he said.
"Ach, I remember that afternoon as though it were only day before yesterday. We were sitting smoking and talking after dinner when Karl said: 'Hans, I've made up my mind that it is time things begun to move a bit—in connection with the movement I mean. We must unite, Hans. All the workers ought to unite—can unite—must unite! We've got a good start in the visit of these French and German workingmen to the Universal Exhibition. The bourgeoisie have shown the way. It must be done.' Then he explained to me how the movement was to be launched, and I promised to help as much as possible in my union. Karl always wanted to get the support of the unions, and many a time did he come to me to get me to introduce some motion in my union.
"It was that way when the great Civil War broke out in America. Karl was mad at the way in which Gladstone and the middle class in general sided with the slave-holders of the South. You see, he not only took the side of the slaves, but he loved President Lincoln. He seemed never to get tired of praising Lincoln. One day he came to me and said with that quiet manner he had when he was most in earnest, 'Hans, we must do something to offset Gladstone's damned infernal support of the slave-traders. We must show President Lincoln that the working class in this country feel and know that he is in the right. And Abraham Lincoln belongs to us, Hans; he's a son of the working class.'
"He said a lot more in praise of Lincoln, and told me how proud he was that the German Socialists had gone to the war, all enlisted in the Northern army; said he'd like to join with Weydemeyer, his old friend, who was fighting under Fremont. So earnest he was about it! Nobody could have guessed that the war meant ruin to him by cutting off his only regular income, the five dollars a week he got for writing for the New York Tribune—I think that was the name of the paper.
"Well, he begged me to get resolutions passed at our union condemning Gladstone and supporting President Lincoln, and I believe that our union was the first body of workingmen in England to pass such resolutions. But Karl didn't stop at that. He got the International to take the matter up with the different workingmen's societies, and meetings were held all over the country. And he kept so much in the background that very few people ever knew that it was Karl Marx who turned the tide of opinion in England to the side of Lincoln. And when Lincoln was murdered by that crazy actor, Booth, Karl actually cried. He made a beautiful speech, and wrote resolutions which were adopted at meetings all over the country. Ah, boy, Lincoln appreciated the support we gave him in those awful days of the war, and Karl showed me the reply Lincoln sent to the General Council thanking them for it.
"Karl was always like that; always guiding the working people to do the right thing, and always letting other people get the credit and the glory. He planned and directed all the meetings of the workers demanding manhood suffrage, in 1866, but he never got the credit of it. All for the cause, he was, and never cared for personal glory. For years he gave all his time to the International and never got a penny for all he did, though his enemies used to say that he was 'getting rich out of the movement.'