Friend, ever dear to me, dearer now in
sorrow. My Wife when she hears of your affliction will send a
true thought over to you also. The poor Lidian!--John Sterling
is driven off again, setting out I think this very day for
Gibraltar, Malta, and Naples. Farewell, and better days to us.

Your affectionate
T. Carlyle

LXXV. Emerson to Carlyle

Concord, 81 March, 1842

My Dear Carlyle,--I wrote you a letter from my brother's office
in New York nearly a month ago to tell you how hardly it had
fared with me here at home, that the eye of my home was plucked
out when that little innocent boy departed in his beauty and
perfection from my sight. Well, I have come back hither to my
work and my play, but he comes not back, and I must simply suffer
it. Doubtless the day will come which will resolve this, as
everything gets resolved, into light, but not yet.

I write now to tell you of a piece of life. I wish you to know
that there is shortly coming to you a man by the name of Bronson
Alcott. If you have heard his name before, forget what you have
heard. Especially if you have ever read anything to which this
name was attached, be sure to forget that; and, inasmuch as in
you lies, permit this stranger when he arrives at your gate to
make a new and primary impression. I do not wish to bespeak any
courtesies or good or bad opinion concerning him. You may love
him, or hate him, or apathetically pass by him, as your genius
shall dictate; only I entreat this, that you do not let him go
quite out of your reach until you are sure you have seen him
and know for certain the nature of the man. And so I leave
contentedly my pilgrim to his fate.

I should tell you that my friend Margaret Fuller, who has edited
our little _Dial_ with such dubious approbation on the part of
you and other men, has suddenly decided a few days ago that she
will edit it no more. The second volume was just closing; shall
it live for a third year? You should know that, if its interior
and spiritual life has been ill fed, its outward and bibliopolic
existence has been worse managed. Its publishers failed, its
short list of subscribers became shorter, and it has never paid
its laborious editor, who has been very generous of her time and
labor, the smallest remuneration. Unhappily, to me alone could
the question be put whether the little aspiring starveling should
be reprieved for another year. I had not the cruelty to kill it