[London,] 26 October 1859 

Dear Engels, 

I trust that you aren’t ill or that some other misfortune hasn’t 
befallen you, but would beg you, whatever the case, To Drop SOME 
LINES since your protracted silence worries me. 

Do please return me the cutting from the Tribune* which I 
enclosed in my last. 

Duncker has now definitely declared himself willing to bring out 
the second instalment.*” Lassalle speaks of his ‘Italian’ tactics quasi 
re bene gesta and, in the course of pressing me to make a 
statement, lets fall the modest hope that perhaps I have revised 
‘my’ opinion.” 

The Kinkel or Schiller festival here, a festival, by the by, that 
will turn out to be an altogether wretched affair, is something 
Freiligrath, ‘as a German poet’, could not but associate himself 
with, though I warned him that he was required simply as an 
accessory to Gottfried.**° 

As regards the Volk I have avoided the County Court process by 
sacrificing asout £5 while, on the other hand, getting Hollinger to 
recognise Biskamp as proprizror on the receipt; he (Biskamp) is 
therefore responsible for the balance, but since he possesses no 
property whatsoever, he is absolved of any further liability. This 
step—a highly unpleasant one under the acruat crrcumstances—had 
to be taken because Kinkel’s gang was only waiting for the case 
in order to raise a public scandal, and not one of the 
paper’s hangers-on was presentable enough to be exhibited in 
court. 

At the request (encompassed in two very plaintive, abject letters) of 
the Augsburger Zeitung I sent them the document relating to 
Blind.” It served the laddie right, the more so because he went to 
Collet and 1. tried to make use of him for sundry subterfuges, 2. 
denounced Liebknecht to Collet as ‘BELONGING TO THE COMMUNIST PARTY’ 

4 the chpping with Marx’s article ‘Kossuth and Louis Napoleon’ - > as a well- 
conducted action - © See this volume, p. 495.