me three immortal
world-figures of vastly divergent types.

Singularly little is known of Karl Marx, even by his most ardent
followers. They know his work, having studied his Das Kapital with the
devotion and earnestness with which an older generation of Christians
studied the Bible, but they are very generally unacquainted with the
man himself. Although more than twenty-six years have elapsed since the
death of Marx, there is no adequate biography of him in any language.

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. S