The delay in this letter is due to two circumstances. Firstly, the damned foggy weather here nothing but mist gave me an extraordinarily severe grippe, which lasted nearly four weeks. Secondly, the enclosed photographs were taken at least seven weeks ago, but only just recently could copies be made from the plate, because of the same weather and the atmospheric darkness. The enclosed letter from A R ge  was given to my friend Strohn  in Bradford by one of his business friends. R ge obviously could not resist the negation of negation . You must send the letter back to me at once, because Strohn has to return it to the addressee. The treasurer of our General Council, Cowell-Stepney  a very rich and distinguished man, but wholly, if in somewhat foolish fashion, devoted to the workers cause enquired of a friend in Bonn about literature (German) dealing with the labour question and socialism. The friend sent him en r ponse  a list made out by Dr Held,  Professor of Political Economy at Bonn. His comments show the terrible limitations of these learned mandarins. He (Held) writes about me and Engels: Fine company to be in! A reader in political economy at a German university writes me that I have quite convinced him, but but his position compels him, like other colleagues , not to express his convictions. This cowardice of the experts, on the one side, and the conspiracy of silence of the bourgeois and reactionary press, on the other, is doing me great harm. Meissner  writes that the accounts for the autumn quarter turned out badly. He is still 200 thalers below the cost of production. He adds: If in a few large places such as Berlin, etc, half as much had been done, as Kugelmann has done in Hanover, we should already have had a second edition. I became a grandfather on 1 January; the new year present was a little boy. Lafargue has at last managed to get excused from three examinations and now has only two to take in France. With best greetings to your dear wife and Fr nzchen. The cross which my eldest daughter, Jenny, is wearing In the photograph is a Polish insurrection cross of 1864.
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1869