IV. Carlyle to Emerson

5 Cheyne Row, Chelsea, London
3 February, 1835

My Dear Sir,--I owe you a speedy answer as well as a grateful
one; for, in spite of the swift ships of the Americans, our
communings pass too slowly. Your letter, written in November,
did not reach me till a few days ago; your Books or Papers have
not yet come,--though the ever-punctual Rich, I can hope, will
now soon get them for me. He showed me his _way-bill_ or
invoice, and the consignment of these friendly effects "to
another gentleman," and undertook with an air of great fidelity
to bring all to a right bearing. On the whole, as the Atlantic
is so broad and deep, ought we not rather to esteem it a
beneficent miracle that messages can arrive at all; that a
little slip of paper will skim over all these weltering floods,
and other inextricable confusions, and come at last, in the hand
of the Twopenny Postman, safe to your lurking-place, like green
leaf in the bill of Noah's Dove? Let us be grateful for mercies;
let us use them while they are granted us. Time was when "they
that feared the Lord spake _often_ one to another." A friendly
thought is the purest gift that man can afford to man. "Speech"
also, they say, "is cheerfuler than light itself."

The date of your letter gives me unhappily no idea but that of
Space and Time. As you know my whereabout, will you throw a
little light on your own? I can imagine Boston, and have often
seen the musket volleys on Bunker Hill; but in this new spot
there is nothing for me save sky and earth, the chance of