ou, because you are the truest and bravest of writers. Every
writer is a skater, who must go partly where he would, and
partly, where the skates carry him; or a sailor, who can only
land where sails can be safely blown. The variations to be
allowed for in the surveyor's compass are nothing like so large
as those that must be allowed for in every book. And a
friendship of old gentlemen who have got rid of many illusions,
survived their ambition, and blushes, and passion for euphony,
and surface harmonies, and tenderness for their accidental
literary stores, but have kept all their curiosity and awe
touching the problems of man and fate and the Cause of causes,--a
friendship of old gentlemen of this fortune is looking more
comely and profitable than anything I have read of love. Such a
dream flatters my incapacities for conversation, for we can all
play at monosyllables, who cannot attempt the gay pictorial
panoramic styles.

So, if ever I hear that you have betrayed the first symptom of
age, that your back is bent a twentieth of an inch from the
perpendicular, I shall hasten to believe you are shearing your
prodigal overgrowths, and are calling in your troops to the
citadel, and I may come in the first steamer to drop in of
evenings and hear the central monosyllables.

Be good now again, and send me quickly--though it be the shortest
autograph certificate of....*

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* The end of this letter is lost.
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CLXIII. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, 2 June, 1858

Dear Emerson,--Glad indeed I am to hear of you on any terms, on
any subject. For the last eighteen months I have pretty much
ceased all human correspondence,--writing no Note that was not in
a sense wrung from me; my one society the _Nightmares_ (Prussian
and other) all that while:--but often and often the image of you,
and the thoughts of old days between us, has risen sad upon me;
and I have waited to get loose from the Nightmares to appeal to
you again,--to edacious Time and you. Most likely in a couple of
weeks you would have heard from me again at any rate.--Your
friends shall be welcome to me; no friend of yours can be other
at any time. Nor in fact did anybody ever sent by you prove
other than pleasant in this house, so pray no apologies on that
small score.--If only these Cincinnati Patricians can find me
here when they come? For I am off to the deepest solitudes
discoverable (native Scotland probably) so soon as I can shake