the matter, how my one
sole wish is to be left to hold my tongue, and by what bayonets
of Necessity clapt to my back I am driven into that Lecture-room,
and in what mood, and ordered to speak or die, I feel as if my
only utterance should be a flood of tears and blubbering! But
that, clearly, will not do. Then again I think it is perhaps
better so; who knows? At all events, we will try what is in
this Lecturing in London. If something, well; if nothing, why
also well. But I do want to get out of these coils for a tune.
My Brother is to be home again in May; if he go back to Italy,
if our Lecturing proved productive, why might we not all set off
thitherward for the winter coming? There is a dream to that
effect. It would suit my wife, too: she was alarmingly weak
this time twelvemonth; and I can only yet tell you that she is
stronger, not strong: she has not ventured out except at midday,
and rarely then, since Autumn last; she sits here patiently
waiting Summer, and charges me to send you her love.--America
also always lies in the background: I do believe, if I live
long, I shall get to Concord one day. Your wife must love me.
If the little Boy be a well-behaved fellow, he shall ride on my
back yet: if not, tell him I will have nothing to do with him,
the riotous little imp that he is. And so God bless you always,
my dear friend! Your affectionate,

--T. Carlyle

XXIII. Emerson to Carlyle*

Concord, 10 May, 1888

My Dear Friend,--Yesterday I had your letter of March. It
quickens my purpose (always all but ripe) to write to you. If it
had come earlier I should have been confirmed in my original
purpose of publishing _Select Miscellanies of T.C._ As it is, we
are far on in the printing of the first two volumes (to make 900
pages) of the papers as they stand in your list. And now I find
we shall only get as far as the seventeenth or eighteenth
article. I regret it, because this book will not embrace those
papers I chiefly desire to provide people with, and it may be
some time, in these years of bankruptcy and famine, before we
shall think it prudent to publish two volumes more. But Loring
is a good man, and thinks that many desire to see the sources of
Nile. I, for my part, fancy that to meet the taste of the
readers we should publish _from the last_ backwards, beginning
with the paper on Scott, which has had the best reception ever
known. Carlyleism is becoming so