The Marx He Knew | Page 3

town. I wish I could remember the verses, but I never was any good for remembering poetry, and it was a long, long time ago--more than three score years ago now.
"We thought it was funny that Karl never gave over playing with the girls--his sister and Jenny von Westphalen. When we were all big boys and ashamed to be seen playing with girls, he would play with them just the same, and sometimes when we asked him to play with us he would say, 'No, boys, I'm going to play with Jenny and Sophie this afternoon.' We'd be mad enough at this, for he was a good fellow to have in a game, and sometimes we would try to tease him out of it. But he could call names better than we could, and then we were all afraid of his terrible verses. So we let him alone lest he make us look silly with his poetry.
"Well, I left school long before Karl did. My father was poor, you see, and there were nine of us children to feed and clothe, so I had to go to work. But I always used to be hearing of Karl's cleverness. People would talk about him in father's shop and say, 'That boy Marx will be a Minister of State some day.'
"By and by we heard that he had gone to Bonn, to the University, and everybody thought that he would soon become a great man. Father was puzzled when Heinrich Marx came in one day and talked very sadly about Karl. He said that Karl had wasted all his time at Bonn and learned nothing, only getting into a bad scrape and spending a lot of money. Father tried to cheer him up, but he was not to be comforted. 'My Karl--the child in whom all my hopes were centered--the brightest boy in Treves--is a failure,' he said over and over again.
[Illustration: JOHANNA BERTHA JULIE JENNY VON WESTPHALEN.]
"Soon after that Karl came home and I saw him nearly every day upon the streets. He was most always with Jenny von Westphalen, and people smiled and nodded their heads when the two passed down the street. My! What a handsome couple they made! Jenny was the beauty of the town, and all the young men were crazy about her. They wrote poems about her and called her all the names of the goddesses, but she had no use for any of the fellows except Karl. And he was as handsome a fellow as ever laughed into a girl's eyes. He was tall and straight as a line, and had the most wonderful eyes I ever saw in my life. They seemed to dance whenever he smiled, but sometimes they flashed fire--when he was vexed, I mean. But I suppose that what the girls liked best was his great mass of coal black curls.
"The girls raved about Karl, and he could have had them all at his feet if he would. I know, for I had two sisters older than myself, and I heard how they and their friends used to talk about him. But Karl had no eyes for any girl but Jenny, except it was his sister.
"Folks all said that Karl and Jenny would marry. Rachel--that's my oldest sister--said so one night at the supper table, but our good mother laughed at her. 'No, Rachel, they'll never marry,' she said. 'Jenny might be willing enough, but the old Baron will never let her do it. Karl's father is rich alongside of poor people like us, but poor enough compared with Jenny's father. Karl is no match for the beautiful Jenny.'
"Then father spoke up. 'You forget, mother, that Heinrich Marx is the best friend that old Baron von Westphalen has, and that the Baron is as fond of Karl as of Jenny. And anyway he loves Jenny so much that he'd be sure to let her marry whoever she loved, even if the man had not a thaler to his name.'
"Soon Karl went away again to the University at Berlin, not back to Bonn. Thought he'd get on better at Berlin, I suppose. He might have been gone a year or more when his father came into father's little shop one day while I was there. He said that Karl wasn't doing as well at Berlin as he had expected. He tried to laugh it off, saying that the boy was in love and would probably settle down to work soon and come out all right, upon top as usual.
"It was then that we learned for the first time that Karl and Jenny were betrothed, and that the old Baron had given his blessing to his daughter and her lover. Very soon all the gossips of the town were talking about it. Some