recognizest me not!" On the whole, it is the strangest feeling I
have:--and practically the thing will be, that you get us by the
earliest opportunity some _living_ pictorial sketch, chalk-
drawing or the like, from a trustworthy hand; and send _it_
hither to represent you. Out of the two I shall compile for
myself a likeness by degrees: but as for this present, we cannot
put up with it at all; to my Wife and me, and to sundry other
parties far and near that have interest in it, there is no
satisfaction in this. So there will be nothing for you but
compliance, by the first fair chance you have: furthermore, I
bargain that the _Lady_ Emerson have, within reasonable limits, a
royal veto in the business (not absolute, if that threaten
extinction to the enterprise, but absolute within the limits of
possibility); and that she take our case in hand, and graciously
consider what can and shall be done. That will answer, I think.

Of late weeks I have been either idle, or sunk in the
sorrowfulest cobbling of old shoes again; sorrowfully reading
over old Books for the Putnams and Chapmans, namely. It is
really painful, looking in one's own old face; said "old face"
no longer a thing extant now!--Happily I have at last finished
it; the whole Lumber-troop with clothes duly brushed (_French
Revolution_ has even got an Index too) travels to New York in the
Steamer that brings you this. _Quod faustum sit:_--or indeed I
do not much care whether it be faustum or not; I grow to care
about an astonishingly small number of things as times turn with
me! Man, all men seem radically _dumb;_ jabbering mere jargons
and noises from the teeth outwards; the inner meaning of them,--
of them and of me, poor devils,--remaining shut, buried forever.
If almost all Books were burnt (my own laid next the coal), I
sometimes in my spleen feel as if it really would be better with
us! Certainly could one generation of men be forced to live
without rhetoric, babblement, hearsay, in short with the tongue
well cut out of them altogether,--their fortunate successors
would find a most improved world to start upon! For Cant does
lie piled on us, high as the zenith; an Augean Stable with the
poisonous confusion piled so high: which, simply if there once
could be nothing said, would mostly dwindle like summer snow
gradually about its business, and leave us free to use our eyes
again! When I see painful Professors of Greek, poring in their