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Vienna, November 8, 1874
Dear Friend,
I write today about a very gloomy week, during which a wintery mood has descended upon me while my anxiously awaited winter coat has not yet arrived, thanks to the whim or tardiness of my esteemed tailor. A kind of tremor is passing through the world; the mortally ill hasten to die, the sickly redouble their coughing and those still in good health surround themselves with bad conductors of heat and exhale clouds of fog from their lungs. Fortunately both of us are among those who have grounds to hope they will see another spring, and I for one have firmly resolved to make better use of Nature's favors and to take better care of my physical well-being by going for walks and on brief outings. The soul, as everyone knows, is immortal and has no need of this; the body, however, is mortal, and would like to be looked after before it dies. You might take this to heart as well and get more recreation than your daily feast of lectures from eight to four o'clock affords. For a lawyer, you have adopted a schedule so rare that it ought to be pickled in alcohol and exhibited in a museum. To attend lectures for six hours at a stretch is something I could no more do than breathe fire or walk a tightrope for six hours; worse still, your lectures are of a kind to make all nine Muses take to their heels: public finance, economics, statistics, and so on. Have you never heard that we only live once? Even a professor of statistics must have been young in his day and could not possibly have undertaken as a freshman, the maternal eggshell of the Gymnasium still stuck to his back, the arid stuff you pursue. If there be any refreshing well in that desert, or an angel to proffer languishing Ishmael1 a cool source, then do let me know and I shall cease marveling at your classes. I thank you for your interesting descriptions of the university, beg you to let me have more, and greatly regret the fact that you have left me in the dark about your actual work an