The second letter is directed to his parents: HALLE, February 6, 1885. _My Dear Parents_: Take in silence what cannot be helped! Who would sacrifice their children, if not you, who have so many? Or should the wealthy do it, when it is the cause of the poor for which we fight? Or should we lay our hands in our laps and wait until others have sacrificed themselves for us? And is it such a great sacrifice I bring? Sick as I am, and with a prospect of long suffering, it should be looked upon as a blessing when such an existence is put to a quick death. And what an end is it? Whoever they are, progressive or reactionary, liberal or conservative, they all hate the Anarchist Reinsdorf. As they have condemned his doings, they cheer his death, the crown of a faithful, self-sacrificing man. But his steadfastness, in defiance of thousands of obstacles, no one can deny. And this shall be your consolation. How many have had to die for smaller causes? How many have lost their lives in dynamite conquests? Take all this in consideration and don’t let your hearts be made heavy through the babble of paltry and narrow-minded people. My last thoughts are of you and of brothers and sisters, and of the great cause for which I die. Deep-felt wishes fill my heart for the prosperity of every one of you. Greetings to my brothers and sisters, especially Carl, Emilie, Emma and Anna, to whom I could not write personally. Shake once more their hands for me. You and I embrace with all the love of childhood, and I greet you a thousand times. Good-by, all. Yours, AUGUST. What Herr Johann Most, the present American leader of the irreconcilables, thought of Reinsdorf, may be judged by the following extracts from Most’s biography: From the 15th to the 22nd of December, 1884, eight workingmen, who had been captured in the war of the poor against the rich, were sitting in the dock, not to have justice passed upon them, but to await the sentence of might which the judges, acting as mouth-pieces for the ruling powers, had in preparation for them. The most prominent figure among these victims of a barbaric order of society was August Reinsdorf. To this man my little book is to be a tribute of esteem. I am well aware of the difficulty of my otherwise quite modest undertaking, to write a biography of the father of the Anarchistic movement within the territory of the German language, yet I hope to do the brothers near and far a service, for the time being at least, by sketching for them a likeness of a true hero of the Social Revolution.... Indeed Reinsdorf was not an agitator of the common sort. Speeches delivered occasionally or written articles were to him only means to a higher purpose—incentives to _action_.