'MY DEAR AND GOOD FRIEND,--What do you think of me that I do not write so long time? Excuse me, my good mamma, for I was so busy in these days I could not do this pleasant thing. I write English without the fear that you laugh at it, because I know it is more agreeable to read the own language, and I think you are not excepted of this rule. It is good of me, for the expressions of love and regard, made with faults, take the funny appearance; they are _ridicule_, and instead to go to the heart, they make the laugh. Never mind, I do it. 'You cannot imagine yourself how _stupide_ is Paris when you are gone. I fly to my work, and make no more fetes,--it is too sad alone. I tie myself to my table and my Vanity (not of mine, for I am not vain, am I?). I wish some chapters to finish themselfs _vite_, that I send them to Pologne and know the end. I have a little question to ask you (of Vanity as always). I cannot translate this, no one of _dictionnaires_ makes me the words, and I think it is _jargon de prison_, this little period. Behold:-- Mopy, is that your snum? Nubble your dad and gully the dog, &c. 'So funny things I cannot explain myself, so I send to you, and you reply sooner than without it, for you have so kind interest in my work you do not stay to wait. So this is a little hook for you to make you write some words to your son who likes it so much and is fond of you. 'My doctor tells me my lungs are soon to be re-established; so you may imagine yourself how glad I am, and of more courage in my future. You may one day see your Varjo in Amerique, if I study commerce as I wish. So then the last time of seeing ourselves is _not_ the last. Is that to please you? I suppose the grand _histoire_ is finished, _n'est ce pas_? You will then send it to me care of M. Gryhomski Austriche, and he will give to me in clandestine way at Varsovie, otherwise it will be confiscated at the frontier by the stupide Russians. 'Now we are dispersed in two sides of world far apart, for soon I go home to Pologne and am no more "_juif errant_." It is now time I work at my life in some useful way, and I do it. 'As I am your _grand fils_, it is proper that I make you my compliment of happy Christmas and New Year, is it not? I wish for you so many as they may fulfil long human life. May this year bring you more and more good hearts to love you (the only real happiness in the hard life), and may I be as now, yours for always, 'VARJO.'