Most revered master,
At last, I am sending you my Christmas gift and New Year's greeting in one. This gift is very much belated, to be sure, and yet without any blame being attached either to Fritzsch or myself, as the post, at times unreliable, belongs to "the powers of fate" over which we have no control.
The package left Leipzig on December 29th, and I have awaited its arrival hourly, in order that I might send the book together with my blessings and good wishes.
May this work, in some slight degree, repay the extraordinary interest you have shown in its genesis, and if I believe that in the main I am right, that only means that you, in your art, must be right through time and eternity. On every page you will find evidence of my gratitude for everything that you have given me, but I am haunted by the terrible doubt as to whether I have always proven myself properly receptive of your gifts. Perhaps I shall be able to do many things much better later, and by "later" I mean the time when the Bayreuth art period is ushered in. In the meantime, I am filled with pride at the thought that I am branded, so to speak, and that henceforth my name will ever be associated with yours. May God have mercy upon your souls, my philologians, if you are still determined to learn nothing!
I should be overjoyed, revered master, if upon the threshold of the new year you will graciously accept this book as an auspicious and friendly omen. I hope soon to be able to send bound copies for you and your wife.
With all good wishes for you and yours and with deep gratitude for all your tokens of friendship, I am, as I was and shall be, yours faithfully, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Source: The Nietzsche-Wagner Correspondence, ed. Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, trans. Caroline V. Kerr (Boni and Liveright, 1921), No. 21