fine
boy! Curly-headed he was, and fat--like a little barrel almost.

[Illustration: BIRTHPLACE OF KARL MARX.]

"So, when I took the shoes sometimes I would stop and play with him a
bit--play with Karl and the girls. He was always playing with
girls--with his sister, Sophie, and little Jenny von Westphalen.

"Sometimes I liked it not so--playing with girls. They were older than
we boys and wanted everything to go their way, and I liked not that
girls should boss boys. So once I teased him about it--told him that
he was a baby to play with girls. Then it was that we fought and he
gave me a black eye and I gave him a bloody nose in return.

"Sometimes the Old Man, Karl's father, would come into my father's
shop and stay a long while chatting. He was a lawyer and father only a
shoemaker; he was quite rich, while father was poor, terribly poor.
But it made no difference to Herr Marx. He would chat with father by
the hour.

"You see, he was born a Jew, but--before Karl was born--he turned
Christian. Father had done the same thing, years before I was born.
Why he did it father would never tell me, but once I heard him and
Heinrich Marx--that was the name of Karl's father--talking about it,
so I got a pretty good idea of the reason.

"'Of course, I am not a believer in the Christian doctrines, friend
Wilhelm.' he said to my father. 'I don't believe that Jesus was God,
nor that he was a Messiah from God. But I do believe in a God--in one
God and no more.

"'And I'm not so dishonorable as to have become a Christian, and to
have had my children baptized as Christians, simply to help me in my
profession,' he said. 'Some of our Hebrew friends have said that, but
it is not true at all. As I see it, friend Wilhelm, Judaism is too
narrow, too conservative. Christianity makes for breadth, for culture,
for freedom. And it is keeping to ourselves, a people set apart, which
makes us Jews hated and despised, strangers in the land. To become one
with all our fellow citizens, to break down the walls of separation,
is what we need to aim at. That is why I forsook Judaism, Wilhelm.'

"From the way that father nodded his head and smiled I could tell,
though he said little, that he was the same sort of a Christian."

"But it was about _him_, the son, that you were speaking, Hans."

"Ach, be patient. Time is more plentiful than money, boy," responded
Hans, somewhat testily.

"Well, of course, we went to the same school, and though Ka