ence was inadvisedly
published after his death, she unwittingly became her husband's
Boswell. For many years after the appearance of her letters, his
personality and treatment of her were more discussed than his
writings. Her references to marital unhappiness were for awhile given
undue prominence; but with the passing of time there came a
recognition of the fact that she was almost as brilliant a writer as
her husband, that, like him, she was frequently ill, and that in
expressing things in a striking way, she sometimes exercised his
prerogative of exaggeration. "Carlyle has to take a journey always
after writing a book," she declared, "and then gets so weary with
knocking about that he has to write another book to recover from it."
She once said that living with him was as bad as keeping a lunatic
asylum.

[Illustration: MRS. CARLYLE.]

Unfortunately, his early privations had caused him to have chronic
indigestion. He thought that the worst punishment he could suggest for
Satan would be to compel him to "try to digest for all eternity with
my stomach." This disorder rendered Carlyle peculiarly irascible and
explosive. His wife's quick temper sometimes took fire at his
querulousness; but her many actions, which spoke much louder than her
words, showed how deeply she loved him and how proud she was of his
genius. After their removal to London, she would quietly buy the
neighbors' crowing roosters, which kept him awake, and she prepared
food that would best suit his disordered digestion. She complained of
his seeming lack of appreciation. "You don't want to be praised for
doing your duty," he said. "I did, though," she wrote.

Carlyle's lack of restraint was most evident in little things. A
German who came from Weimar to see him was unfortunately admitted
during a period of stress in writing. A minute later the German was
seen rapidly descending the stairs and leaving the house. Carlyle
immediately hurried to the room where his wife was receiving a
visitor, and tragically asked what he had done to cause the Almighty
to send a German all the way from Weimar to wrench off the handles of
his cupboard doors. Carlyle did not then appear to realize that the
frightened German had mistaken the locked cupboard doors for the exit
from the room. On the other hand, when the great political economist,
John Stuart Mill, was responsible for the loss of the borrowed
manuscript of the first volume of _The French Revolution_, Carlyle