ngs--_Ay de mi!_*

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* The signature has been cut off.
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LXXIII. Emerson to Carlyle

New York, 28 February, 1842

My Dear Friend,--I enclose a bill of exchange for forty-eight
pounds sterling, payable by Baring Brothers & Co. after sixty
days from the 25th of February.

This Sum is part of a payment from Little and Brown on account of
sales of your London _French Revolution and of Chartism._ As
another part of their payment they asked me if they might not
draw on the estate of James Fraser for a balance due from his
house to them, and pay you so. I, perhaps unwisely, consented to
make the proffer to you, with the distinct stipulation, however,
that if it should not prove perfectly agreeable to you, and
exactly as available as another form of money, you should
instantly return it to me, and they shall pay me the amount,
$41.57, or L8 12s. 5d. in cash. My mercantile friend, Abel
Adams, did not admire my wisdom in accepting this bill of Little
and Brown; so I told them I should probably bring it back to
them, and if there is a shadow of inconvenience in it you will
send it back to me by the next steamer. For they have no claims
on us. I decide not to enclose the Little and Brown bill in this
sheet,--but to let it accompany this letter in the same packet.

I grieve to hear that you have bought any of our wretched
Southern Stocks. In New England all Southern and Southwestern
debt is usually regarded as hopeless, unless the debtor is
personally known. Massachusetts stock is in the best credit of
any public stock. Ward told me that it would be safest for you
to keep your Illinois stock, although he could say nothing very
good of it.

Our city banks in Boston are in better credit than the banks in
any other city here, yet one in which a large part of my own
property is invested has failed, for the two last half-years, to
pay any dividend, and I am a poor man until next April, when, I
hope, it will not fail me again. If you wish to invest money
here, my friend Abel Adams, who is the principal partner in one
of our best houses, Barnard, Adams, & Co., will know how to give
you the best assistance and action the case admits.

My dear friend, you should have had this letter and these
messages by the last steamer; but when it sailed, my son, a
perfect little boy of five years and three months, had ended his
earthly life.* You can never sympathize with me; you can never
know how much of