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