"DEAR RUSKIN,
"You have sent me a munificent Box of Cigars; for wh'h what can I say in ans'r? It makes me both sad and glad. Ay de mi.
"We are such stuff,
Gone with a puff—Then
think, and smoke Tobacco!'
"The Wife also has had her Flowers; and a letter wh'h has charmed the female mind. You forgot only the first chapter of 'Aglaia';—don't forget; and be a good boy for the future.
"The Geology Book wasn't Jukes; I found it again in the Magazine,—reviewed there: 'Phillips,'[9] is there such a name? It has ag'n escaped me. I have a notion to come out actually some day soon; and take a serious Lecture from you on what you really know, and can give me some intelligible outline of, ab't the Rocks,—bones of our poor old Mother; wh'h have always been venerable and strange to me. Next to nothing of rational could I ever learn of the subject....
"Yours ever,
"T. CARLYLE."
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