without answering it.

-----------
* The original of this letter is missing; what is printed here
is from the rough draft.
-----------

I received in August your letter of June, and just then hearing
that a lady, a little lady with a mighty heart, Mrs. Child,* whom
I scarcely know but do much respect, was about to visit England
(invited thither for work's sake by the African or Abolition
Society) and that she begged an introduction to you, I used
the occasion to say the godsend was come, and that I would
acknowledge it as soon as three then impending tasks were ended.
I have now learned that Mrs. Child was detained for weeks in New
York and did not sail. Only last night I received your letter
written in May, with the four copies of the _Sartor,_ which by a
strange oversight have been lying weeks, probably months, in the
Custom-House. On such provocation I can sit still no longer.

------------
* The excellent Mrs. Lydia Maria Child, whose romance of
_Philothea_ was published in this year, 1835.

"If her heart at high floods swamps her brain now and then,
'T is but richer for that when the tide ebbs agen."

says Lowell, in his _Fable for Critics._
-----------

The three tasks were, a literary address; a historical discourse
on the two-hundredth anniversary of our little town of Concord*
(my first adventure in print, which I shall send you); the
third, my marriage, now happily consummated. All three, from the
least to the greatest, trod so fast upon each other's heel as to
leave me, who am a slow and awkward workman, no interstice big
enough for a letter that should hope to convey any information.
Again I waited that the Discourse might go in his new jacket to
show how busy I had been, but the creeping country press has not
dressed it yet. Now congratulate me, my friend, as indeed you
have already done, that I live with my wife in my own house,
waiting on the good future. The house is not large, but
convenient and very elastic. The more hearts (specially great
hearts) it holds, the better it looks and feels. I have not had
so much leisure yet but that the fact of having ample space to
spread my books and blotted paper is still gratifying. So know
now that your rooms in America wait for you, and that my wife is
making ready a closet for Mrs. Carlyle.

----------
* "A Historical Discourse, delivered before the Citizens of
Concord, 12th September, 1835, on the Second Centennial
Anniversary of the