[Ventnor,] 9 January 1883 

My Dear Good Child, 

How kind of you to write to me so often and at such length; how- 
ever af do not wish to ENCROACH ON THE VERY LITTLE ‘FREE’ TIME YOU HAVE TO 

* partner-” K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Preface to the 1872 German Edition of the 
Manifesto of the Communist Party’.-° Lev Hartmann 

dispose of. I got your letter after I had sent off mine,* after my return 
from an excursion by the sea. I have had no further news from Paris. 

Today I was on the point of ‘setting forth on foot’ again — despite 
THE NOISE OF THE WIND—— when my doctor? arrived; he told me I was to 
stay at home as it was very cold outdoors. He examined me again. All 
as before, in as much as the catarrh is chronic (hence, too, the persist- 
ent hoarseness), though from a ‘higher’ viewpoint my condition has 
improved in as much as the critical spots have not been affected in 
any way. This semi-permanent cough would be tiresome enough, but 
with the daily vomissements< it becomes loathsome. This frequently 
makes work impossible, though the doctor believes — he still believes 
AND THAT IS SOMETHING! — he can rid me of this torment oe the help of 
a little remedy he has just prescribed). Qui vivra, verra.* 

Apropos. somewhere in my bedroom or my desk there must still be 
copies of my photograph from Algiers in a writing case or some LITTLE 
Box or other. * If you could find them, you might send me two photo- 
gramms. One of them I have promised to forward to Madame 
Williamson.* +#*° 

Yesterday Mr Meissner sent me his account for 1881; it shows 
a very slight drop, so there is bound to be a corresponding increase for 
1882 as he also wrote saying that he is rapidly running out of copies 
of Capital. Naturally he is getting impatient about the revised 
sheets.° It is an unconscionable time since he heard from me on the 
subject. Now he will get some definite news. 

Cowen’s speecu quoad'‘Ecrer is on the same lines as Hyndman’s 
political music of the future, English style. These groaning bourgeois 
(and even Cowen is a bourgeois in this respect), these poor British 
bourgeois, who groan as they assume more and more ‘RESPONSABILITIES’ 
in the service of their historic mission, while vainly protesting against 
it-—and can even Cowen himself help smirking over the entrancing 
little prospect of all those fortified offensive positions between the At- 
lantic and the Indian Ocean and, intro THE bargain, an ‘African-British 
Empire’ from the Delta to the Cape? Very naice! In fact there could 
be no more blatant example of Christian hypocrisy than the ‘con- 
quest’ of Egypt— conquest in the midst of peace! Even Cowen, and 
he is certainly the best of the English parlementaires," secretly admires 

 See this volume, pp. 420-21.-> James M. Williamson -° vomiting-? We shall see. - 
© of the first volume of Capital, 3rd German edition -' as to- sic-" parliamentarians