it in that gentle after-dinner hour so friendly to good
digestion. Stearns Wheeler dreams that it is possible to draw at
this eleventh hour some possible manuscript out of the unedited
treasures of Teufelsdrockh's cabinets. If the manuscripts were
ready, all fairly copied out by foreseeing scribes in your
sanctuary at Chelsea, the good goblin of steam would--with the
least waiting, perhaps a few days--bring the packet to our types
in time. I have little hope, almost none, from a sally so
desperate on possible portfolios; but neither will I be wanting
to my sanguine co-editor, your good friend. So I told him I
would give you as instant notice as Mr. Rogers at the Merchants'
Exchange Bar can contrive, and tell you plainly that we shall
proceed to print _Rahel_ when we come so far on; and with that
paper end; unless we shall receive some contrary word from you.
And if we can obtain any manuscript from you before we have
actually bound our book, we will cancel our last sheets and
insert it. And so may the friendly Heaven grant a speedy passage
to my letter and to yours! I fear the possibility of our success
is still further reduced by the season of the year, as the
Lectures must shortly be on foot. Well, the best speed to them
also. When I think of you as speaking and not writing them, I
remember Luther's words, "He that can speak well, the same is
a man."

I hope you liked John Dwight's translations of Goethe, and his
notes. He is a good, susceptible, yearning soul, not so apt to
create as to receive with the freest allowance, but I like his
books very much.

Do think to say in a letter whether you received _from me_ a copy
of our edition of your _French Revolution._ I ordered a copy
sent to you,--probably wrote your name in it,--but it does not
appear in the bookseller's account. Farewell.

--R.W. Emerson

XXXVI. Carlyle to Emerson

Chelsea, London, 13 April, 1839

My Dear Emerson,--Has anything gone wrong with you? How is it
that you do not write to me? These three or four weeks, I know
not whether _duly_ or not so long, I have been in daily hope of
some sign from you; but none comes; not even a Newspaper,--open
at the ends. The German Translator, Mr. Dwight, mentioned, at
the end of a Letter I had not long ago, that you had given a
brilliant course of Lectures at Boston, but had been obliged to
_intermit it on account of illness._ Bad news indeed,