own and carries it in his hand. Another is
John M. Forbes, a strictly private citizen, of great executive
ability, and noblest affections, a motive power and regulator
essential to our City, refusing all office, but impossible to
spare; and these are men whom to name the voice breaks and the
eye is wet. A multitude of young men are growing up here of high
promise, and I compare gladly the social poverty of my youth with
the power on which these draw. The Lowell race, again, in our
War yielded three or four martyrs so able and tender and true,
that James Russell Lowell cannot allude to them in verse or prose
but the public is melted anew. Well, all these know you well,
have read and will read you, yes, and will prize and use your
benefaction to the College; and I believe it would add hope,
health, and strength to you to come and see them.

In my much writing I believe I have left the chief things unsaid.
But come! I and my house wait for you.

Affectionately,
R.W. Emerson

CLXXXVIa. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 10 April, 1871

My Dear Friend,--I fear there is no pardon from you, none from
myself, for this immense new gap in our correspondence. Yet no
hour came from month to month to write a letter, since whatever
deliverance I got from one web in the last year served only to
throw me into another web as pitiless. Yet what gossamer these
tasks of mine must appear to your might! Believe that the
American climate is unmanning, or that one American whom you know
is severely taxed by Lilliput labors. The last hot summer
enfeebled me till my young people coaxed me to go with Edward to
the White Hills, and we climbed or were dragged up Agiocochook,
in August, and its sleet and snowy air nerved me again for the
time. But the booksellers, whom I had long ago urged to reprint
Plutarch's _Morals,_ claimed some forgotten promise, and set me
on reading the old patriarch again, and writing a few pages about
him, which no doubt cost me as much time and pottering as it
would cost you to write a History. Then an "Oration" was due to
the New England Society in New York, on the 250th anniversary of
the Plymouth Landing,--as I thought myself familiar with the
story, and holding also some opinions thereupon. But in the
Libraries I found alcoves full of books and documents reckoned
essential; and, at New York, after reading for an hour to the
great assembly out of my massy manuscript, I refused to pri