"He used to come and see me at the hospital sometimes. No matter how tired and worried he might be--and I could tell that pretty well by looking at his face when he didn't know that I was looking--he always was cheerful with me. He wanted to cheer me up, you see, so he told me all the encouraging news about the movement--though there wasn't very much that was encouraging--and then he would crack jokes and tell stories that made me laugh so loud that all the other patients in the room would get to laughing too. "I told him one day about a little German lad in a bed at the lower end of the ward. Poor little chap, he had been operated on several times, but there was no hope. He was bound to die, the nurse told me. When I told Karl the tears came into his eyes and he kept on moaning, 'Poor little chap! So young! Poor little chap!' He went down and talked with him for an hour or more, and I could hear the boy's laughter ring through the long hospital ward. We'd never heard him laugh before, for no one ever came to see him, poor lonesome little fellow. "Karl always used to spend some of his time with the little chap after that. He would bring books and read to him in his mother tongue, or tell him wonderful stories. The poor little chap was so happy to see him and always used to kiss 'Uncle Nick,' as Karl taught the boy to call him. And when the little fellow died, Karl wept just as though the lad had been his own kin, and insisted upon following him to the grave." "Ah, that was great and noble, Hans! How he must have felt the great universal heart-ache!" "I used to go to the German Communist Club to hear Karl lecture. That was years later, in the winter of 1856, I think. Karl had been staying away from the club for three or four years. He was sick of their faction fights, and disgusted with the hot-heads who were always crying for violent revolution. I saw him very often during the time that he kept away from the club, when Kinkel and Willich and other romantic middle-class men held sway there. Karl would say to me: 'Bah! It's all froth, Hans, every bit of it is froth. They cry out for revolution because the words seem big and impressive, but they mustn't be regarded seriously. Pop-gun revolutionists they are!' "Well, as I was saying, I heard the lectures on political economy which Karl gave at the club along in fifty-six and fifty-seven. He lectured to us just as he talked to the juries, quietly and slowly--like a teacher. Then he would ask us questions to find out how much we knew, and the man who showed that he had not been listening carefully got a scolding. Karl would look right at him and say: 'And did you _really_ listen to the lecture, Comrade So-and-So?' A fine teacher he was.