Chelsea, 6 April, 1870
Dear Emerson,—The day before yesterday your welcome Letter came to hand, with the welcome news in it; yesterday I put into my poor Document here the few words still needed; locked everything into its still repository (your Letter, President Eliot's, Norton's, &c., &c.); and walked out into the sunshine, piously thankful that a poor little whim, which had long lain fondly in my heart, had realized itself with an emphasis I could never hope, and was become (thanks to generous enthusiasm on New England's part) a beautiful little fact, lying done there, so far as I had to do with it. Truly your account of matters threw a glow of life into my thoughts which is very rare there now; altogether a gratifying little Transaction to me,—and I must add a surprising, for the enthusiasm of good-will is evidently great, and the occasion is almost infinitesimally small! Well, well; it is all finished off and completed,—(you can tell Mr. Eliot, with many thanks from me, that I did introduce the proper style, "President and Fellows," &c., and have forgotten nothing of what he said, or of what he did);—and so we will say only, Faustum sit, as our last word on the subject;—and to me it will be, for some days yet, under these vernal skies, something that is itself connected with THE SPRING in a still higher sense; a little white and red-lipped bit of Daisy pure and poor, scattered into TIME's Seedfield, and struggling above ground there, uttering its bit of prophecy withal, among the ox-hoofs and big jungles that are everywhere about and not prophetic of much!—
One thing only I regret, that you have spoken of the affair! For God's sake don't; and those kindly people to whom you have,- -swear them to silence for love of me! The poor little _Daisy_kin will get into the Newspapers, and become the nastiest of Cabbages:—silence, silence, I beg of you to the utmost stretch of your power! Or is the case already irremediable? I will hope not. Talk about such things, especially Penny Editor's talk, is like vile coal-smoke filling your poor little world; silence alone is azure, and has a sky to it.—But, enough now.
The "little Book" never came; and, I doubt, never will: it is a fate that seems to await three fourths of the Books that attempt to reach me by the American Post; owing to some informality in wrapping (I have heard);—it never gave me any notable regret till now. However, I had already bought myself an English copy, rather gaudy little volume (probably intended for the railways, as if it were a Book to be read there), but perfectly printed, ready to be read anywhere by the open eye and earnest mind;— which I read here, accordingly, with great attention, clear assent for most part, and admiring recognition. It seems to me you are all your old self here, and something more. A calm insight, piercing to the very centre; a beautiful sympathy, a beautiful epic humor; a soul peaceably irrefragable in this loud-jangling world, of which it sees the ugliness, but notices only the huge new opulences (still so anarchic); knows the electric telegraph, with all its vulgar botherations and impertinences, accurately for what it is, and ditto ditto the oldest eternal Theologies of men. All this belongs to the Highest Class of thought (you may depend upon it); and again seemed to me as, in several respects, the one perfectly Human Voice I had heard among my fellow-creatures for a long time. And then the "style," the treatment and expression,—yes, it is inimitable, best—Emersonian throughout. Such brevity, simplicity, softness, homely grace; with such a penetrating meaning, soft enough, but irresistible, going down to the depths and up to the heights, as silent electricity goes. You have done very well; and many will know it ever better by degrees.—Only one thing farther I will note: How you go as if altogether on the "Over-Soul," the Ideal, the Perfect or Universal and Eternal in this life of ours; and take so little heed of the frightful quantities of friction and perverse impediment there everywhere are; the reflections upon which in my own poor life made me now and then very sad, as I read you. Ah me, ah me; what a vista it is, mournful, beautiful, unfathomable as Eternity itself, these last fifty years of Time to me.—
Let me not forget to thank you for that fourth page of your Note; I should say it was almost the most interesting of all. News from yourself at first hand; a momentary glimpse into the actual Household at Concord, face to face, as in years of old! True, I get vague news of you from time to time; but what are these in comparison?—If you will, at the eleventh hour, turn over a new leaf, and write me Letters again,—but I doubt you won't. And yet were it not worth while, think you? [Greek]— will be here anon.—My kindest regards to your wife. Adieu, my ever-kind Old Friend.
Yours faithfully always,
T. Carlyle
CLXXXIV. Emerson to Carlyle
Concord, 17 June, 1870
My Dear Carlyle,—Two* unanswered letters filled and fragrant and potent with goodness will not let me procrastinate another minute, or I shall sink and deserve to sink into my dormouse condition. You are of the Anakim, and know nothing of the debility and postponement of the blonde constitution. Well, if you shame us by your reservoir inexhaustible of force, you indemnify and cheer some of us, or one of us, by charges of electricity.
———— * One seems to be missing. ————