My Wife unites with me in all kindest acknowledgments:  she is getting stronger these last two years; but is still such a sailor as the Island hardly parallels:  had she the Space-annihilating Hat, she too were soon with you.  Your message shall reach Miss Martineau; my Dame will send it in her first Letter.  The good Harriet is not well; but keeps a very courageous heart.  She lives by the shore of the beautiful blue Northumbrian Sea; a “many-sounding” solitude which I often envy her.  She writes unweariedly, has many friends visiting her.  You saw her Toussaint l’Ouverture: how she has made such a beautiful “black Washington,” or “Washington-Christ-Macready,” as I have heard some call it, of a rough-handed, hard-headed, semi-articulate gabbling Negro; and of the horriblest phasis that “Sansculottism” can exhibit, of a Black Sansculottism, a musical Opera or Oratorio in pink stockings!  It is very beautiful.  Beautiful as a child’s heart,—­and in so shrewd a head as that.  She is now writing express Children’s-Tales, which I calculate I shall find more perfect.

Some ten days ago there went from me to Liverpool, perhaps there will arrive at Concord by this very “Acadia,” a bundle of Printed Sheets directed to your Husband:  pray apprise the man of that.  They are sheets of a Volume called Lectures on Heroes; the Concord Hero gets them without direction or advice of any kind.  I have got some four sheets more ready for him here; shall perhaps send them too, along with this.  Some four again more will complete the thing.  I know not what he will make of it;—­ perhaps wry faces at it?

Adieu, dear Mrs. Emerson.  We salute you from this house.  May all good which the Heavens grant to a kind heart, and the good which they never refuse to one such, abide with you always.  I commend myself to your and Emerson’s good Mother, to the mischievous Boys and—­all the Household.  Peace and fair Spring-weather be there!

Yours with great regard,
                   T. Carlyle

LXI.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 28 February, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,—­Behold Mr. George Nichols’s new digest and exegesis of his October accounts.  The letter seems to me the most intelligible of the two papers, but I have long been that man’s victim, semi-annually, and never dare to make head against his figures.  You are a brave man, and out of the ring of his enchantments, and withal have magicians of your own who can give spell for spell, and read his incantations backward.  I entreat you to set them on the work, and convict his figures if you can.  He has really taken pains, and is quite proud of his establishment of his accounts.  In a month it will be April, and be will have a new one to fender.  Little and Brown also in April promise a payment on French Revolution,—­and I suppose something is due from Chartism. We will hope that a Bill of Exchange will yet cross from us to you, before our booksellers fail.