oming to America," and the
tidings cordially greeted by the editors; though I had just
received your letter silent to any such point. Make that story
true, though it had never a verisimilitude since thirty odd years
ago, and you shall make many souls happy and perhaps show you so
many needs and opportunities for beneficent power that you cannot
be allowed to grow old or withdraw. Was I not once promised a
visit? This house entreats you earnestly and lovingly to come
and dwell in it. My wife and Ellen and Edward E. are thoroughly
acquainted with your greatness and your loveliness. And it is
but ten days of healthy sea to pass.

So wishes heartily and affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

CLXXXV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, 28 September, 1870

Dear Emerson,--Your Letter, dated 15 June, never got to me till
about ten days ago; when my little Niece and I returned out of
Scotland, and a long, rather empty Visit there! It had missed me
here only by two or three days; and my highly _in_felicitous
Selectress of Letters to be forwarded had left _it_ carefully
aside as undeserving that honor,--good faithful old Woman, one
hopes she is greatly stronger on some sides than in this
literary-selective one. Certainly no Letter was forwarded that
had the hundredth part of the right to be so; certainly, of all
the Letters that came to me, or were left waiting here, this was,
in comparison, the one which might _not_ with propriety have been
left to lie stranded forever, or to wander on the winds forever!--

One of my first journeys was to Chapman, with vehement _rebuke_
of this inconceivable "Cincinnati-Massachusetts" business.
_Stupiditas stupiditatum;_ I never in my life, not even in that
unpunctual House, fell in with anything that equaled it. Instant
amendment was at once undertaken for, nay it seems had been
already in part performed: "Ten volumes, following the nine you
already had, were despatched in Field & Co.'s box above two
months ago," so Chapman solemnly said and asseverated to me; so
that by this time you ought actually to have in hand nineteen
volumes; and the twentieth (first of _Friedrich_), which came
out ten days ago, is to go in Field & Co.'s Box this week, and
ought, not many days after the arrival of this Letter, to be in
Boston waiting for you there. The _Chapman's Homer_ (two
volumes) had gone with that first Field Packet; and would be
handed