People who some twenty-five years ago saw Marcus Thrane on the streets on the streets of our city -- a feeble old man, generally followed by two big dogs -- or those who had learned to know him as a lover of children, flowers and music, would hardly believe that this kind old man had once been the unwilling cause of the mobilizing of an army in a European kingdom. Mr. Thrane came from one of the best Norwegian families; his uncle was the famous Norwegian composer, Waldemar Thrane. As a young man Marcus Thrane came in contact with the ideas that later on through the "Internationale" laid the foundation for the modern socialist movement. Marcus Thrane became the leader of the workingmen in Norway. His platform, which was considered dangerous at the time, was very moderate indeed, and nearly all his reforms were later on carried through by the regular political agencies of Norway. He was, however, looked upon as a dangerous individual, and arrested and kept for years in con! finement. When he was arrested Norway was on the verge of a revolutionary uprising. The whole of Europe was fermented with it at the time, and it was probably this that made the authorities of Norway nervous. Marcus Thrane had been at rest in his grave at the Lake View cemetery many years before the people of Norway understood what an able, farseeing and in fact moderate reformer he had been, and to recognize all he had done for the uplifting of the laboring classes of Norway. His name is an honored one now, and several monuments have been erected with his likeness cast in bronze. He was born October 14, 1817, and died in 1891. His son, Dr. A. Thrane, is a well-known practicing physician in our city. - Transcribed from the "History of Eau Claire County Wisconsin, 1914" pages 579 & 580