me little money in excess
of expenses, which was given to me. I shared it with Hansteen, and he
looked up with a bright flash in his dark eyes: "Now," said he, "'Til
Frihet' will come out one month sooner." "Til Frihet" (Towards Freedom)
was his paper; and would you know how it came out? He set it up in his
free moments, he did the mechanical work; and then, being too poor to
pay for its delivery through the post, except the few copies that were
sent abroad, he took it from house to house himself, over the hills of
Kristiania!--he, a consumptive, the cough rending him!

There was a driving rain the night I left the city; he wore no rubbers
or gum-coat. I was in hopes that he might think the propaganda deserved
that its one active worker should get a pair of rubbers, since he must
carry papers through the rain. I reminded him that he should keep his
feet dry; he only glanced at them as if they were no concern of his,
and--"'Til Frihet' will come out one month sooner."

It was in "Til Frihet" that he had been guilty of high treason. It
happened once that King Oscar, in temporary retirement from public
king-business, had left over to the Crown Prince the execution of
certain matters, which according to the "Ground Law" of Norway could not
be so left; whereupon Comrade Hansteen printed an editorial saying,
"Oscar has broken the ground-law, and there is no more a King in
Norway." For this he was charged with high treason, and to escape
imprisonment he went to England, where he remained about a year among
the London comrades. On his return, there was some threat of carrying
out the prosecution, but, probably to avoid wider publication of the
king's "treason," the matter was dropped. Previous to that Comrade
Hansteen had had experience of prison life. In a May-day procession,
ostensibly to include all labor reform or revolutionary parties, he,
declaring that Anarchists should be given place too, marched, carrying a
red flag. The chief of police directed a subordinate to take the flag
away from him. Easily enough done, but not, as an evidence of unwilling
submission, before he had struck the official in the face with his hand.
That little hand, weak and delicate as a woman's! An ordinary man would
have pushed it aside like a feather and thought no more of it; but the
official paid tribute to the big will behind the puny flesh by
sentencing him to seven months in prison.

My ignorance of Norwegian prevents my giving any adequa