Three sheets of the Essays lay waiting me at my Mother’s, for correction; needing as good as none.  The type and shape is the same as that of late Lectures on Heroes. Robson the Printer, who is a very punctual intelligent man, a scholar withal, undertook to be himself the corrector of the other sheets.  I hope you will find them “exactly conformable to the text, minus mere Typographical blunders and the more salient American spellings (labor for labour, &c.).”  The Book is perhaps just getting itself subscribed in these very days.  It should have been out before now:  but poor Fraser is in the country, dangerously ill, which perhaps retards it a little; and the season, at any rate, is at the very dullest.  By the first conveyance I will send a certain Lady two copies of it.  Little danger but the Edition will sell; Fraser knows his own Trade well enough, and is as much a “desperado” as poor Attila Schmelzle was!  Poor James, I wish he were well again; but really at times I am very anxious about him.—­The Book will sell; will be liked and disliked.  Harriet Martineau, whom I saw in passing hitherward, writes with her accustomed enthusiasm about it.  Richard Milnes too is very warm.  John Sterling scolds and kisses it (as the manner of the man is), and concludes by inquiring, whether there is any procurable Likeness of Emerson?  Emerson himself can answer.  There ought to be.

—­Good Heavens!  Here came my Wife, all in tears, pointing out to me a poor ship, just tumbled over on a sand-bank on the Cumberland coast; men still said to be alive on it,—­a Belfast steamer doing all it can to get in contact with it!  Moments are precious (say the people on the beach), the flood runs ten miles an hour.  Thank God, the steamer’s boat is out:  “eleven men,” says a person with a glass, “are saved:  it is an American timber-ship, coming up without a Pilot.”  And now—­in ten minutes more—­there lies the melancholy mass alone among the waters, wreck-boats all hastening towards it, like birds of prey; the poor Canadians all up and away towards Annan.  What an end for my Letter, which nevertheless must end!  Adieu, dear Emerson.  Address to Chelsea next time.  I can say no more.

Yours ever,
        T.C.

LXIX.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 30 October, 1841

My Dear Carlyle,—­I was in Boston yesterday, and found at Munroe’s your promised packet of the two London Books.  They are very handsome,—­that for my wife is beautiful,—­and I am not so old or so cold but that I can feel the hope and the pleasure that lie in this gift.  It seems I am to speak in England—­great England—­fortified by the good word of one whose word is fame.  Well, it is a lasting joy to be indebted to the wise and generous; and I am well contented that my little boat should swim, whilst it can, beside your great galleys, nor will I allow my discontent with the great faults of the book, which the rich English dress cannot hide, to spoil my joy in this fine little romance of friendship and hope.  I am determined—­so help me all Muses—­to send you something better another day.