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Tuesday morning in laboratory
June 27, 1882
My sweet girl
I have torn a few pages out of my copy book to write to you while my experiment is taking place. The pen has been stolen from the professor's1 desk, the people around me think I am computing my analysis; just now someone came over and made me lose ten minutes. Beside me a silly panel doctor is testing an even sillier ointment to see if it contains something harmful; in front of me in my apparatus sizzle the gas bubbles which I have to filter. The whole thing once more spells resignation, waiting; two-thirds of chemistry consists of waiting; it is probably the same with life and the nicest thing about it is what one grants oneself in secret, as I am doing now. Your sweet letter came quite unexpectedly and was therefore doubly welcome, and I enjoyed the tall trees and the lovely garden as well as the charming confusion in your dear sentences. Look out, girl, the drawers2 are being put back in order, in a new order, I hope, but-I was about to say something else when an utterly idiotic neighbor involved me in a conversation about quicksilver salt. May God punish him for it.
Well, your letter makes up for today's bad weather; within me the sun is shining from a blue sky, outside there is fog and drizzle. Why do you think the address you used this time is conspicuous? Here it is the most convenient, or do you mean it is conspicuous in Wandsbek? Your letter (I am no longer going to say “sweet,” I am going to apply to the Berlin Academy for an increase of affectionate adjectives-I am so in need of them) bore the postmark Hamburg.