Chelsea, 9 December, 1840

Dear Emerson,--My answer on this occasion has been delayed above
two weeks by a rigorous, searching investigation into the
procedure of the hapless Book-conveyer, Kennet, in reference to
that copy of the _Miscellanies._ I was deceived by hopes of a
conclusive response from day to day; not till yesterday did any
come. My first step, taken long ago, was to address a new copy
of the Book, not to you, luckless man, but to _Lydia_ Emerson,
the fortunate wife; this copy Green now has lying by him,
waiting for the January Steamer (we sail only once a month in
this season); before the New Year has got out of infancy the
Lady will be graciously pleased to make a few inches of room on
her bookshelves for this celebrated performance. And now as to
Kennet, take the brief outcome of some dozen visitations,
judicial interrogatories, searches of documents, and other
piercing work on the part of methodic Fraser, attended with
demurrers, pleadings, false denials, false affirmings, on the
part of innocent chaotic Kennet: namely, that the said Kennet,
so urged, did in the end of the last week, fish up from his
repositories your very identical Book directed to Munroe's care,
duly booked and engaged for, in May last, but left to repose
itself in the Covent-Garden crypts ever since without disturbance
from gods or men! Fraser has brought back the Book, and you have
lost it;--and the Library of my native village in Scotland is to
get it; and not Kennet any more in this world, but Green ever
henceforth is to be our Book Carrier. There is a history.
Green, it seems, addresses also to Munroe; but the thing, I
suppose, will now shift for itself without watching.

As to the bibliopolic Accounts, my Friend! we will trust them,
with a faith known only in the purer ages of Roman Catholicism,--
when Papacy had indeed become a Dubiety, but was not yet a
Quackery and Falsehood, was a thing _as_ true as it could manage
to be! That really may be the fact of this too. In any case
what signifies it much? Money were still useful; but it is not
now so indispensable. Booksellers by their knavery or their
fidelity cannot kill us or cure us. Of the truth of Waldo
Emerson's heart to me, there is, God be thanked for it, no doubt
at all.

My Hero-Lectures lie still in Manuscript. Fraser offers no
amount of cash adequate to be an outward motive; and inwardly
there is as yet none altogether clear, though I rathe