| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 30 November 1883 |
ENGELS TO JOHANN PHILIPP BECKER
IN GENEVA
London, 30 November 1883
Dear Old Man,
I can't tell you how glad I was to see your own handwriting again. Nowhere had I been able to learn anything definite about how you were getting on, and am now glad to know that you are at least to some extent back on your feet again.
I, too, have been in bed for a good month now, in order to rid myself of a mild but most tiresome and prolonged ailment, and can only write very briefly since any position but the horizontal is forbidden me. But no doubt I, too, will soon be up again and able to tackle the large accumulation of work.
As soon as I can resume the task of putting Marx's papers in order, I shall look out the things you want,[1] but everything is still in the utmost disorder since I have to attend to everything myself. Mme La- fargue has been living in Paris for a year or more now, and the young- est sister[2] has furnished a couple of rooms nearby — nearby being half an hour's walk from here, and since it is I alone who must decide what is important and what is not among the vast mass of papers, etc., it is understandable that, considering her many literary activi- ties, she should leave the sorting out to me.
I, too, hope that I shall see you again, my old comrade-in-arms, somewhere some day — who knows whether it might not be, as once before, at Durlach and Vöhrenbach in mid-campaign ' 2 7? How won- derful that would be! And, after all, the present swindle can't go on for very much longer, provided Mr Bismarck does not again hold up or temporarily obstruct revolutionary developments by unleashing a general war, as is clearly his intention.
You will be getting from the post office a money order for £5 ster- ling.
But now I must lie down flat on my back again. Goodbye, old man. See that you get fit again, and write sometimes to your old, trusty
F. Engels