Yours ever,
        T. Carlyle

LXXXVIII.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 31 December, 1843

My Dear Friend,—­I have had two good letters from you, and it is fully my turn to write, so you shall have a token on this latest day of the year.  I rejoice in this good will you bear to so many friends of mine,—­if they will go to you, you must thank yourself.  Best when you are mutually contented.  I wished lately I might serve Mr. Macready, who sent me your letter.—­I called on him and introduced him to Sam G. Ward, my friend and the best man in the city, and, besides all his personal merits, a master of all the offices of hospitality.  Ward was to keep himself informed of Macready’s times, and bring me to him when there was opportunity.  But he stayed but a few days in Boston, and, Ward said, was in very good hands, and promised to see us when he returns by and by.  I saw him in Hamlet, but should much prefer to see him as Macready.

I must try to entice Mr. Macready out here into my pines and alder bushes.  Just now the moon is shining on snow-drifts, four, five, and six feet high, but, before his return, they will melt; and already this my not native but ancestral village, which I came to live in nearly ten years ago because it was the quietest of farming towns, and off the road, is found to lie on the directest line of road from Boston to Montreal, a railroad is a-building through our secretest woodlands, and, tomorrow morning, our people go to Boston in two hours instead of three, and, next June, in one.  This petty revolution in our country matters was very odious to me when it began, but it is hard to resist the joy of all one’s neighbors, and I must be contented to be carted like a chattel in the cars and be glad to see the forest fall.  This rushing on your journey is plainly a capital invention for our spacious America, but it is more dignified and man-like to walk barefoot.—­But do you not see that we are getting to be neighbors? a day from London to Liverpool; twelve or eleven to Boston; and an hour to Concord; and you have owed me a visit these ten years.

I mean to send with your January Dial a copy of the number for Sterling, as it contains a review of his tragedy and poems, by Margaret Fuller.  I have not yet seen the article, and the lady affirms that it is very bad, as she was ill all the time she was writing; but I hope and believe better.  She, Margaret Fuller, is an admirable person, whose writing gives feeble account of her.  But I was to say that I shall send this Dial for J.S. to your care, as I know not the way to the Isle of Wight.

Enclosed in this letter I send a bill of exchange for L32 8s. 2d. payable by Baring & Co.  It happens to represent an exact balance on Munroe’s books, and that slow mortal should have paid it before.  I have not yet got to Clark, I who am a slow mortal, but have my eye fixed on him.  Remember me and mine with kindest salutations to your wife and brother.