[Ventnor,] 10 January 1883 

Dear Fred,

It was very good of you to forward me Lafargue’s letter so 
promptly. It reassured me very much, the more so since, by the 
same post today, I heard direct from Lafargue, according to whom 
a turn for the better would seem to be assured. I entirely share your 
view that Johnny ought under no circumstances to leave just now. There 
can be no question of that until Jenny has completely recovered. It 
would be unpardonable to add to the difficulty of the child’s position. 
I shall write to Longuet direct this very day. I should be glad if you 
could drop Jennychen a few lines to the same effect. After all, it’s not 
as though Johnny is going to be lost pour l’armée territoriale.° 

It is curious how, nowadays, any sort of nervous excitement imme- 
diately grips me by the throat, as red Wolff did his brother, the corn 
profiteer. Alias,* the initial shock of the bad news from Paris a few 
days ago induced a fit of spasmodic coughing during which I thought 
I was going to choke. Poor Jennychen must often have suffered from 
this highly distressing feeling during the course of her asthma.

As for ‘little Hepner’, I suggest we treat him in a ‘businesslike’ way, 
telling him that he is at liberty to reprint our preface to the Leipzig 
edition’ and also pointing out that the Russians published a new 
translation last year.‘ If he doesn’t consider it worth while to reprint 
the Manifesto without our writing another special preface, he can take it or 
leave it, as he thinks fit in the circumstances. ‘Holding a pistol to one’s 
head’ comes as second nature to ‘our people’ and, where little Hepner 
is concerned, it’s something we have to accept as a matter of course. 

Poor Meissner has sent me a statement of accounts for 1881, say- 
ing it had been a poor year; not that this really signifies for, by his 
own account, he was getting ‘short’ of copies in 1882; so the fewer he 
sold in 1881, the more he must have sold in 1882. My prolonged 
silence must have bamboozled him. At last Mahomet will be going 
to him, though not, alas, what he would greatly prefer —a bundle of 
revised sheets.t Since my long—and only seldom interrupted — 
confinement to the house first began, but especially as a result of con- 
stant nausea or, to use the more aesthetic South German expression 4 la 
Madame Karl Blind, née Cohen,’ as a result of daily ‘puking’ (caused 
by my cough), I have up till now been scarcely capable of pressing on 
with the revision. But I believe that, given patience and rigorous self- 
discipline, I shall soon get back onto the rails again. 

Moor