| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 30 November 1892 |
ENGELS TO PAUL STUMPF
IN MAINZ
London, 30 November 1892
My dear old Stumpf,
You could have given me no greater pleasure on my seventy-second birthday than by sending me the Ultramontanist 68 confirmation of our victory in the Mainz elections. 69 You Mainz people sometimes tend to be gas-bags—born wine salesmen—but when it comes to the point you can also buckle to and move mountains, and it will always be remembered in your favour that Mainz was the only German city to play an honourable role during the great revolution. 70 Nature gave you the gift of the gab which is just what is wanted when it comes to working on the peasants, the more so in that you have in the wine growers round about you a great quantity of material to work on. If you address yourself energetically to the task, you will be able to achieve something and show the Cologne people how it's done. From Mainz to Cologne and down to Cleve there's still many a poor soul to be snatched away from the priests and still many a constituency to be won, and this is precisely the moment when the gentlemen of the Centre 71 are on the point either of thoroughly compromising themselves over the military question or of leading the entire Centre up the garden path.
Apart from that, I should like to send you my best thanks and to say how glad I am that you had been keeping well and have been feeling even 'better' since. I too am keeping well. We had the whole Brimstone Gang 72 here on Sunday and a few more besides, all of whom vigorously addressed themselves to the wine cup.[1]
If we have a few more of these scandals in Paris 60, we may soon be able to re-enact the old comedy of autumn '47 in Brussels; the world is beginning to look shaky.
Your old
F. Engels