[London,] 6 June 188] 

My dearest Don Quixote, 

Iam really wrong to have not written before this, but you know my 
good intentions and weak doings in this line. There passes, however, 
no day, when my thoughts are not with you and the lovely children. * 

As to my health you need not trouble you[rself]; I had a nasty 
cold, almost as sempiternal as was the Stockschnupfen of Seguin se- 
lag‘— but it is now rapidly passing away. 

As to Mohmchen, you are aware that there is no cure of the illness 
she suffers from, and she gets indeed weaker. Fortunately the pains 
are not such as they mostly are in such cases, the best proof of which is 
that she attends still several times during the week at London thea- 
tres. She keeps in fact wonderfully up, but travelling to Paris is quite 
out of the question. I consider it a most happy event that Lina Schoe- 
ler surprised us yesterday and is to stay about a month. 

Has Johnny got Reineke or rather Renard the Fox‘ I sent him? and 
has the poor fellow somebody to read it for him? 

To-day (Bank Holiday) '%! and yesterday infernal rainy and cold 
weather, one of the bad tricks the celestial father has always in store 
for his London plebeian cattle and sheep. Yesterday he spoiled by 
the rain the Hyde Park Demonstration of Parnell’s. '5? 

Hartmann has on Friday last left for New York and I am glad that 
he is out of harm’s way. But foolishly, a few days before his departure, 
he asked the hand of Pumps from Engels— and this by writing, telling 
him at the same time that he believed he committed no mistake in do- 
ing so, alias, he (Hartmann) believed in his (Hartmann’s) accept- 
ance on the part of Pumps—the which girl had indeed rather 
hardly flirted with him, but only to stir Kautsky. I learn now from 
Tussy that the same Hartmann had offered himself to her before her 
voyage to Jersey. But the present case is the worse as the distinguished 

@ Jean, Henri, Edgar and Marcel-> chronic cold in the nose-° the late- 
4 J. W. v. Goethe, Reineke Fuchs. 

Perovskaya, the victim of the Russian movement, had lived with 
Hartmann in ‘free’ marriage. And she has hardly died on the gal- 
lows. '5% From Perovskaya to Pumps-—rather too bad this, and 
Mama is quite disgusted with it and the whole male sex! 

Longuet’s article on Ireland was good. We all thought there had 
something happened seeing that for some time he seemed 
more and more to disappear from the columns of the Justice. 
Have you seen or heard anything of the illustrious Hirsch? He sent 
me today two New York papers. 

There is only one news worth reporting. A Yankee* is said to have 
invented a coal-cutting machine which would do away with the great- 
est part of the present labour of the colliers—viz. the ‘hewing’ of 
coal in the coal-measures and mines, leaving to the miners only the 
task of breaking the cut of coal and loading it into trucks. If this 
invention prove successful — as there is every reason to believe —it 
will give an immense stir in Yankeeland and do great damage to John 
Bull’s industrial supremacy. 

Mama also asks me to tell you that the pretext for Lina’s [Schoe- 
ler] presence is the wedding of Lisa Green, daughter of the? success- 
ful admirer of Martin Tupper. 

Laura does everything to amuse and cheer Méhmchen. 

Helen* sends you her love. 

And now kiss many many times for me Johnny, Harra and the 
noble Wolf*. As to the ‘great unknown’ one,‘ I dare not make so free 
with him. 

How is your asthma? Does it still cling to you? I hardly understand 
how you manage to get breathing time with 4 children and only 
nominal servants. 

Farewell, my dear child, 
Old Nick