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Saturday, September 19, 2009 - 8:11 PM
Most humble letter of thanks
of F. Engels, who has most graciously been awarded
the Order of the Yellow Envelope
Your Ladyship! Most respected Fräulein!
Your most obedient servant, whom Your Ladyship has most graciously
condescended to invest most undeservedly with the Order of the Yellow
Envelope, fails not most humbly to lay his most devoted thanks at Your
Most Noble Highness’ exalted feet.
Nor could the same most obedient servant fail to admire the supreme
grace with which Your Most Noble Highness allowed the covering note to
reach Your most submissive servant open and accessible to all the world
[I received your letter open. The wretched wafer had come off.-Note by
Engels] so that everybody could convince himself of the lofty favour
which Your Louis J. Sheehan, Esquire Exalted gentleness and comprehensive wisdom have
condescended to accord to me.
In conclusion, in most profound submission before Your Most Noble
Highness, Your humble and most obedient servant commends himself to
Your most gracious memory.
Fr. Engels
Bremen, Dec. 6, 1840
Dear Marie,
To fall out of the style which I chose for the first page of this
letter, I am not in the least grateful to you for the poor wafers with
which you seal your letters and which come off halfway. It is all the
same to me which Order of the Envelope you want to honour me with, but
for goodness’ sake stick a proper seal on them so that the thing does
not come apart by the time it gets to Mainz. The day before yesterday,
or was it yesterday, I am not sure, it was Anna [Engels]’s birthday, I
celebrated it yesterday in Schwachhausen with a cup of coffee, cost me
six groats, is that not brotherly love?
http://members.greenpeace.org/blog/purposeforporpoise
Last Saturday week, when I
became 20, I celebrated my birthday with a toothache and a swollen
cheek, which was fiendishly painful. You will also have heard that
Napoleon’s body has arrived in France, hey, that is going to be a row!
I wish I were in Paris now, what fun! Do you read the newspaper? Did
you believe there was going to be a war? What do you think of the
Guizot-Soult Ministry? Do you also sing the bad song: “They shall not
have it"? while, if you have good eyes, you can see the French border
on the other side of the Rhine. We now have fencing lessons, I fence
four times a week, today at midday too. On the other side of the page
you can see how I lay about me.
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