MARX TO LUDWIG KUGELMANN”*” 

London, 26 October 1868 

My dear Friend, 

Only these few lines in reply to your letter,”’? which arrived at a 
moment when I am burdened with a visitor. 

Kertbény’s address: No. 11/111 (what the III means I don’t know, 
perhaps the floor) Behrenstrasse. 

Now, permit me a word. Since you and Engels were of the 
opinion that it would be useful, I gave in on the question of the 
advertisement in the Gartenlaube* My conviction was decisively 
against it. And now I request you urgently finally to abandon this 
joke. The only result is that fellows like Keil and the Daheim sort 
believe one to belong to the tribe of great men, literary or other, 
and to need or seek their protection. 

I believe this sort of thing is harmful rather than helpful and 
beneath the dignity of a man of science. For instance, Meyer’s 
Konversationslexikon wrote a long time ago asking me for a 
biography. Not only did I not send one; I did not even reply to 
the letter. Everybody must work out his own salvation. 

As for Kertbény, he is a pompous, confused, importunate 
literary idler, and the less one has to do with him the better. 

Salut. 
oe Yours 

K. M.