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.’

“Ach, that used to make me mad ­the way they lied about Karl.  The papers used to print stories about the ‘Brimstone League,’ a sort of ‘inner circle’ connected with the International, though we all knew there was never such a thing in existence.  Karl was accused of trying to plan murders and bloody revolutions, the very thing he hated and feared above everything else.  Always fighting those who talked that way, he was; said they were spies and hired agents of the enemy, trying to bring the movement to ruin.  Didn’t he oppose Weitling and Herwegh and Bakunin on that very ground?

“I was with Karl when Lassalle visited him, in 1862, and heard what he said then about foolish attempts to start revolutions by the sword.  Lassalle had sent a Captain Schweigert to Karl a little while before that with a letter, begging Karl to help the Captain raise the money to buy a lot of guns for an insurrection.  Karl had refused to have anything to do with the scheme, and Lassalle was mad about it.  ’Your ways are too slow for me, my dear Marx,’ he said.  ’Why, it’ll take a whole generation to develop a political party of the proletariat strong enough to do anything.’

“Karl smiled in that quiet way he had and said:  ’Yes, it’s slow enough, friend Lassalle, slow enough.  But we want brains for the foundation of our revolution ­brains, not powder.  We must have patience, lots of patience.  Mushrooms grow up in a night and last only a day; oaks take a hundred years to grow, but the wood lasts a thousand years.  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.”