Ever affectionately yours,
R.W. Emerson




CLIX. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 20 July, 1856

Dear Emerson;--Welcome was your Letter to me, after the long
interval; as welcome as any human Letter could now well be.
These many months and years I have been sunk in what disastrous
vortexes of foreign wreck you know, till I am fallen sick and
almost broken-hearted, and my life (if it were not this one
interest, of doing a problem which I see to be impossible, and of
smallish value if found doable!) is burdensome and without
meaning to me. It is so rarely I hear the voice of a magnanimous
Brother Man addressing any word to me: ninety-nine hundredths of
the Letters I get are impertinent clutchings of me by the button,
concerning which the one business is, How to get handsomely loose
again; What to say that shall soonest _end_ the intrusion,--if
saying Nothing will not be the best way. Which last I often in
my sorrow have recourse to, at what ever known risks. "We must
pay our tribute to Time": ah yes, yes;--and yet I will believe,
so long as we continue together in this sphere of things there
will always be a _potential_ Letter coming out of New England for
me, and the world not fallen irretrievably dumb.--The best is, I
am about going into Scotland, in two days, into deep solitude,
for a couple of months beside the Solway sea: I absolutely need