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"The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1834-1872, Vol II."


Today I am on the eve of an expedition into Suffolk, and full of
petty business: however, I will throw you one word, were it only
to lighten my own heart a little. You are a kind friend to me,
and a precious;--and when I mourn over the impotence of Human
Speech, and how each of us, speak or write as he will, has to
stand _dumb,_ cased up in his own unutterabilities, before his
unutterable Brother, I feel always as if Emerson were the man I
could soonest _try_ to speak with,--were I within reach of him!
Well; we must be content. A pen is a pen, and worth something;
though it expresses about as much of a _man's_ meaning perhaps as
the stamping of a hoof will express of a horse's meaning; a very
poor expression indeed!
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* This letter of 15th August is missing.
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Your bibliopolic advice about Cromwell or my next Book shall be
carefully attended, if I live ever to write another Book! But I
have again got down into primeval Night; and live alone and mute
with the _Manes,_ as you say; uncertain whether I shall ever
more see day.


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