HOW THE CANNON KING DIED.
By Theron Brown
HERR KRUPP, the cannon king, was Tubal-Cain of modern times, and his achievements in hand work and brain work inside of fifty years probably surpassed all that his prototype accomplished in an antediluvian life-time. He was so busy that one reading the record of his labors and inventions would imagine he never slept. Indeed, he used often to say, “Man will only find rest after the soul is freed from the body.” His temper and character seemed to assimilate the material of his trade; for the epithet, “man of iron,” belongs to him by right of merit. He was harsh, vindictive, stubborn, and implacable. His men, and even his own family, had bitter cause to know this. When his son Fritz contested the seat in Parliament for his native borough of Essen, and the candidate of the clerical or “ultramontane” party defeated him, Herr Krupp gave orders that no employé of his should read or take home one of that party’s local papers. Soon after, discovering that a poor workman had wrapped his dinner in a copy of an ultramontane journal, he sent for him, and discharged him on the spot. Of the strange cowardice which makes him the dark side of our present picture, the cause of his separation from his wife is a lurid illustration. A relative of his wife, while on a visit to his home, suddenly fell sick and died. Herr Krupp, when he heard of it, refused to enter his house, but fled to Dusseldorf, and stayed there till the funeral was over. Mrs. Krupp’s very natural remonstrance against his conduct so enraged him that she found it impossible to live longer with him, and from that time she made her home in Dresden. He remained relentless to the last; and when, in his sickness, she sent word asking to visit him, he sternly resisted the entreaties of his son to let her come. He would not see her. The weakness which sent this “man of iron” flying from a funeral scene was a long known and inseparable trait, and he even took pains to make it conspicuous. He never forgave anyone who spoke to him of dying. The greatest manufacturer of death could not bear the thought or mention of death. It was a standing order throughout his vast works that no one there should ever refer to it in conversation. No man ventured so much as to utter the word “death,” for fear of provoking the wrath of the cannon king. As Krupp grew old, the horror of the inevitable end constantly haunted him, and finally, when sickness came, all the most famous doctors in the German Empire were sent for in turn to attend the unhappy millionaire. The last was Chancellor Bismarck’s own physician, Dr. Schweniger. A few days before his death he said to him, “My dear doctor, make me live ten years longer, and I’ll gladly give you a million.” One cannot help recalling the dying shriek of Queen Elizabeth: “Millions of money for an inch of time!”—Rev. Theron Brown, in Congregationalist.