Yours ever,
       T. Carlyle

CLXXXVI.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 15 October, 1870

My Dear Carlyle,—­I am the ignoblest of all men in my perpetual short-comings to you.  There is no example of constancy like yours, and it always stings my stupor into temporary recovery and wonderful resolution to accept the noble challenge.  But “the strong hours conquer us,” and I am the victim of miscellany,—­ miscellany of designs, vast debility, and procrastination.

Already many days before your letter came, Fields sent me a package from you, which he said he had found a little late, because they were covered up in a box of printed sheets of other character, and this treasure was not at first discovered.  They are,—­Life of Sterling; Latter Day Pamphlets; Past and Present; Heroes; 5 Vols. Cromwell’s Letters and Speeches. Unhappily, Vol.  II. of Cromwell is wanting, and there is a duplicate of Vol.  V. instead of it.  Now, two days ago came your letter, and tells me that the good old gods have also inspired you to send me Chapman’s Homer! and that it came—­heroes with heroes—­in the same enchanted box.  I went to Fields yesterday and demanded the book.  He ignored all,—­even to the books he had already sent me; called Osgood to council, and they agreed that it must be that all these came in a bog of sheets of Dickens from Chapman, which was sent to the Stereotypers at Cambridge; and the box shall be instantly explored.  We will see what tomorrow shall find.  As to the duplicates, I will say here, that I have received two:  first, the above-mentioned Vol.  II. of Cromwell; and, second, long before, a second copy of Sartor Resartus, apparently instead of the Vol.  I. of the French Revolution, which did not come.  I proposed to Fields to send back to Chapman these two duplicates.  But he said, “No, it will cost as much as the price of the books.”  I shall try to find in New York who represents Chapman and sells these books, and put them to his credit there, in exchange for the volumes I lack.  Meantime, my serious thanks for all these treasures go to you,—­steadily good to my youth and my age.

Your letter was most welcome, and most in that I thought I read, in what you say of not making the long-promised visit hither, a little willingness to come.  Think again, I pray you, of that Ocean Voyage, which is probably the best medicine and restorative which remains to us at your age and mine.  Nine or ten days will bring you (and commonly with unexpected comfort and easements on the way) to Boston.  Every reading person in America holds you in exceptional regard, and will rejoice in your arrival.  They have forgotten your scarlet sins before or during the war.  I have long ceased to apologize for or explain your savage sayings about American or other republics or publics, and am willing that anointed