Doubtless some better-equipped German writer, such as Franz Mehring or Eduard Bernstein, will some day give us the adequate and full biography for which the world now waits. Here is an admission that there exists no adequate biography of Karl Marx, and here is also an intimation that simply as a man, and not merely as a great firebrand of socialism, Marx is well worth studying. And so it has occurred to me to give in these pages one episode of his career that seems to me quite curious, together with some significant touches concerning the man as apart from the socialist. Let the thousands of volumes already in existence suffice for the latter. The motto of this paper is not the Vergilian "Arms and the man I sing," but simply "The man I sing"--and the woman. Karl Marx was born nearly ninety-four years ago--May 5, 1818--in the city which the French call Treves and the Germans Trier, among the vine-clad hills of the Moselle. Today, the town is commonplace enough when you pass through it, but when you look into its history, and seek out that history's evidences, you will find that it was not always a rather sleepy little place. It was one of the chosen abodes of the Emperors of the West, after Rome began to be governed by Gauls and Spaniards, rather than by Romans and Italians. The traveler often pauses there to see the Porta Nigra, that immense gate once strongly fortified, and he will doubtless visit also what is left of the fine baths and amphitheater. Treves, therefore, has a right to be termed imperial, and it was the birthplace of one whose sway over the minds of men has been both imperial and imperious. Karl Marx was one of those whose intellectual achievements were so great as to dwarf his individuality and his private life. What he taught with almost terrific vigor made his very presence in the Continental monarchies a source of eminent danger. He was driven from country to country. Kings and emperors were leagued together against him. Soldiers were called forth, and blood was shed because of him. But, little by little, his teaching seems to have leavened the thought of the whole civilized world, so that to-day thousands who barely know his name are deeply affected by his ideas, and believe that the state should control and manage everything for the good of all. Marx seems to have inherited little from either of his parents. His father, Heinrich Marx, was a provincial Jewish lawyer who had adopted Christianity, probably because it was expedient, and because it enabled him to hold local offices and gain some social consequence. He had changed his name from Mordecai to Marx. The elder Marx was very shrewd and tactful, and achieved a fair position among the professional men and small officials in the city of Treves. He had seen the horrors of the French Revolution, and was philosopher enough to understand the meaning of that mighty upheaval, and of the Napoleonic era which followed.