I think in a fortnight I shall need to write again,—­probably to introduce to you my countrywoman, Miss Sedgwick, the writer of affectionate New England tales and the like, who is about to go to Europe for a year or more.  I will then get somewhat definite from Brown as to rates and prices.  Brown thought you might better send the plates here first, as we are in immediate want of copies; and afterwards print with them in London.  He is quite sure that it would be more profitable to print them in this manner than to try to import and sell here the books after being manufactured in London.

On the 30th of April we shall ship at New York the first two volumes of the Miscellanies, two hundred and sixty copies.  In four weeks, the second two volumes will be finished, unless we wait for something to be added by yourself, agreeably to a suggestion of Wheeler’s and mine.  Two copies of Schiller’s Life will go in the same box.  We send them to the port of London.  When these are gone, only one hundred copies remain unsold of the first two volumes (Miscellanies).

Brown said it was important that the plates should be proved correct at London by striking off impressions before they were sent hither.  This is the whole of my present message.  I shall have somewhat presently to reply to your last letter, received three weeks since.  And may health and peace dwell with you and yours!

—­R.W.  Emerson

XXXIX.  Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 25 April, 1839

My Dear Friend,—­Behold my account!  A very simple thing, is it not!  A very mouse, after such months, almost years, of promise!  Despise it not, however; for such is my extreme dulness at figures and statements that this nothing has been a fear to me, a long time, how to extract it from the bookseller’s promiscuous account with me, and from obscure records of my own.  You see that it promises yet to pay you between $60 and $70 more, if Mr. Fuller (a gentleman of Providence, who procured many subscribers for us there) and Mr. Owen (who owes us also for copies subscribed for) will pay us our demand.  They have both been lately reminded of their delinquency.  Herrick and Noyes, you will see credited for eight copies, $18.  They are booksellers who supplied eight subscribers, and charged us $2 for their trouble and some alleged damage to a copy.  One copy you will see is sold to Ann Pomeroy for $3.  This lady bought the copy of me, and preferred sending me $3 to sending $2.50 for so good a book.  You will notice one or two other variations in the prices, in each of which I aimed to use a friend’s discretion.  Add lastly, that you must revise all my figures, as I am a hopeless blunderer, and quite lately made a brilliant mistake in regard to the amount of 9 multiplied by 12.

Have I asked you whether you received from me a copy of the History? I designated a copy to go, and the bookseller’s boy thinks he sent one, but there is none charged in their account.  The account of the Miscellanies does not prosper quite so well....