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Vienna, July 30, 1873
Dear Friend,
It appears that you received my last letter, in which I informed you about the missing order, no more than you did my first letter
and the item itself. It is remarkable—I cannot explain it otherwise than that we have a friend in the post office with a special interest in our correspondence, and who perhaps also has a son studying Gabelsberger's shorthand.
Take note, therefore, 1. that I wrote you a letter on (about) the seventeenth, in which I told you I would send the book and the remainder of the money. (You received this letter)
2) that I dispatched the Zeplichal in a wrapper on the nineteenth
and 3) that on the twenty-second I wrote you a long letter weighted down with the fifty kreuzer left over from the three guilders (the same day that we sent off Dolfi's birthday present)
4) that on about the twenty-fourth, by way of a reply to your letter which indicated to me that you had received neither the book nor my first letter, I wrote again, advising you to make enquiries with the Roznau postmaster and to send me a speedy reply.
To this last letter I have had no answer, nor do I gather anything about you from my mother's and sisters' letter, so that I am now writing by registered post, lest the same mishap that has befallen me two or three times occur again.
I must, however, confess that I am much more anxious to hear whether you have received my consignment and why you do not write, so that I can provide you as soon as possible with another book and other letters to make up for the loss. Alas, enclosed in the letter that has gone astray was a masterpiece of a biblical idyll, to which I am not likely to turn my hand again, as my innocuous good humor has long since gone to blazes.