FREIBURG, December 23.
Dear Max--I have read with much sympathy your account of your little
mishaps and annoyances. The cook often spoke to me very much as she did
to you, but I put up with it because she is a good cook, and only cooks
who know nothing are polite. Now you see what I have had to stand for
years, and that there are problems in that department also which can
not be solved by natural science.
I can not, at this distance, advise you what to do, and should not
consider myself justified in doing so now that our intimate relations
have been terminated in so dignified a manner, as you so truly remark
in your first letter. As for the furrier’s ticket and the sleeve
buttons, I will wager that I could find them both in five minutes. You
_must_ remember how often you have hunted in vain for a thing which I
have found at the first attempt. Men occasionally discover a new truth
but never an old button.
Since a correspondence has been begun by you, I have a little request
to make. I forgot before I left to ask you for the letters which you
wrote me during our engagement, and which at my request you put in
your safe. They are my property, and I should like to have them as a
reminder of happier days. Will you be so kind as to send them to me?
Wishing you a Merry Christmas,