Dear Little Heinemännel!
Here you have a living letter: a faithful, good soul, who will give you news from myself and Minna a thousand times better than my poor pen could do.
Moreover, this letter will not strain your eyes. If you can send me nothing of this living sort, be assured that with immense delight I would accept, by way of compensation, a pen-ink-and-paper letter instead. Do not keep me waiting for it, and believe me I ever and ever think of you with faithful affection.
Your
Richard.
Source: Richard Wagner's Letters to His Dresden Friends, Theodor Uhlig, Wilhelm Fischer, and Ferdinand Heine, trans. J. S. Shedlock (Scribner & Welford, 1890), No. 164