despite the most tempting offers, refused to prostitute his talents in the service of the ruling caste, he was hounded as a felon, and branded as an enemy of the race, and made to suffer all the physical and mental tortures of the damned. Here is an extract from a private letter, written by Mrs. Marx to a friend during this period, which it is difficult to read even now without emotion:—
I will describe to you only one single day of this life. The keeping of a wet nurse for my baby was out of the question, so I resolved to nurse the child myself, in spite of terrible pains in the breast and in the back. But the poor little angel drank so much silent worry from me that he was sickly from the first day of his life, lying in pain day and night. He did not sleep a single night more than two or three hours. Then he became subject to cramp,and was wavering constantly between death and miserable life. In these pains he drew so hard that my breast got sore and broke open; often the blood streamed into his little quivering mouth.
So I was sitting one day when our landlady stepped in and demanded £5, the sum we owed for rent, and because we were unable to pay at once two constables stepped in and attached my small belongings, beds, linen, clothes, all, even the cradle of my poor baby, and the toys of the two girls, who stood by crying bitterly.
In two hours they threatened they would take all and everything away. I was lying there on the bare hard floor with my freezing children and my sore breast. In the end a friend helped us. I sold my bedding to satisfy the druggist, the baker, the butcher, and the milkman.
THE HEROIC WIFE.
But the brave woman complained not. She too loved the cause. She knew the titanic struggle in which her husband was engaged; how he was being assailed by jealous rivals and carping critics within the movement and implacable enemies without, and how much all this added to the burden of his herculean labours. She was his helpmate and comrade. And thus it was that, despite the fearful struggle, these two continued to be sweethearts and playmates to the end. The movement can never know all that it owes to the women who stand by their men in the dark days.
By and by the financial situation grew more easy, but Marx's health had been shattered beyond repair. He continued to work as hard as ever, but breakdowns became ever more frequent. Then came the end.
"On the 14th of March, 1883, shortly before 2 o'clock, the crisis came, and Engels was at once summoned. He found Eleanor in tears. Marx had gone from the bedroom to the study, they said, where, seated in his armchair, he seemed half asleep. Engels went to the study at once and found his old friend, not half asleep, but fully and for ever, with a smile upon his lips. Karl Marx was dead."
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