Do not believe me for my reticency less hungry
for letters. I grieve at the want and loss, and am about writing
again, that I may hear from you.
Ever affectionately yours,
R.W. Emerson
CLIX. Carlyle to Emerson
Chelsea, 20 July, 1856
Dear Emerson;--Welcome was your Letter to me, after the long
interval; as welcome as any human Letter could now well be.
These many months and years I have been sunk in what disastrous
vortexes of foreign wreck you know, till I am fallen sick and
almost broken-hearted, and my life (if it were not this one
interest, of doing a problem which I see to be impossible, and of
smallish value if found doable!) is burdensome and without
meaning to me. It is so rarely I hear the voice of a magnanimous
Brother Man addressing any word to me: ninety-nine hundredths of
the Letters I get are impertinent clutchings of me by the button,
concerning which the one business is, How to get handsomely loose
again; What to say that shall soonest _end_ the intrusion,--if
saying Nothing will not be the best way.
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