Wednesday, 13, Chicago.—­Arrived here and can bring this little sheet to the post-office here.  My daughter Edith Forbes, and her husband William H. Forbes, and three other friends, accompany me, and we shall overtake Mr. Forbes senior tomorrow at Burlington, Iowa.

The widow of one of the noblest of our young martyrs in the War, Col.  Lowell,* cousin [nephew] of James Russell Lowell, sends me word that she wishes me to give her a note of introduction to you, confiding to me that she has once written a letter to you which procured her the happiest reply from you, and I shall obey her, and you will see her and own her rights.  Still continue to be magnanimous to your friend,

—­R.W.  Emerson

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* Charles Russell Lowell, to be remembered always with honor in
company with his brother James Jackson Lowell and his cousin
William Lowell Putnam,—­a shining group among the youths who have
died for their country.
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CLXXXVII.  Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 4 June, 1871

Dear Emerson,—­Your Letter gave me great pleasure.  A gleam of sunshine after a long tract of lowering weather.  It is not you that are to blame for this sad gap in our correspondence; it is I, or rather it is my misfortunes, and miserable inabilities, broken resolutions, etc., etc.  The truth is, the winter here was very unfriendly to me; broke ruinously into my sleep; and through that into every other department of my businesses, spiritual and temporal; so that from about New-Year’s Day last I have been, in a manner, good for nothing,—­nor am yet, though I do again feel as if the beautiful Summer weather might perhaps do something for me.  This it was that choked every enterprise; and postponed your Letter, week after week, through so many months.  Let us not speak of it farther!

Note, meanwhile, I have no disease about me; nothing but the gradual decay of any poor digestive faculty I latterly had,—­or indeed ever had since I was three and twenty years of age.  Let us be quiet with it; accept it as a mode of exit, of which always there must be some mode.

I have got done with all my press-correctings, editionings, and paltry bother of that kind:  Vol. 30 will embark for you about the middle of this month; there are then to follow ("uniform,” as the printers call it, though in smaller type) a little volume called General Index; and three more volumes of Translations from the German; after which we two will reckon and count; and if there is any lacuna on the Concord shelf, at once make it good.  Enough, enough on that score.