friendship of old gentlemen who have got rid of many illusions,
survived their ambition, and blushes, and passion for euphony,
and surface harmonies, and tenderness for their accidental
literary stores, but have kept all their curiosity and awe
touching the problems of man and fate and the Cause of causes,--a
friendship of old gentlemen of this fortune is looking more
comely and profitable than anything I have read of love. Such a
dream flatters my incapacities for conversation, for we can all
play at monosyllables, who cannot attempt the gay pictorial
panoramic styles.

So, if ever I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of
age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the
perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your
prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the
citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of
evenings and hear the central monosyllables.

Be good now again, and send me quickly--though it be the shortest
autograph certificate of....*

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* The end of this letter is lost.
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CLXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 2 June, 1858