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."

VII

"But he did not die soon--he lived more than ten years after that,
Hans," said the