Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Carlyle's laugh and other surprises

[151] me: not wholly on the score of my seniority, but because I have had my “three calls” and more, and because he has ever been so strong and young and debonair. Health, happiness, ease, travel, all “things waregan,” seemed his natural right. If I, too, wished for a portion of his felicities, I never envied one to whom they came by the very fitness of things. And I grieve the more for his death, because it seems to violate that fitness.

Now, I can't think of meeting you on Friday without first making this poor and inadequate attempt to set one thing right. Your latest letter --I was, at least, moved by it to address myself at once to a full reply, but was myself attacked that day so sorely by the grippe that I went to bed before completing it and was useless for weeks; the letter showed me that you thought, as well you might, that I had been hurt or vexed by something you had unwittingly done or written. I can say little to-night but to confess that no act, word, or writing, of yours from first to last has not seemed to contain all the friendship, kindness, recognition, that I could ever ask for. .... Perhaps I have the ancestral infirmity of clinging to my fealties for good and all; but, as I say, you are my creditor in every way, and I constantly find myself in sympathy with your writings, beliefs, causes, judgments.--Now I recall it, the very choice you made of a little lyric of mine as the one at my “high-water” mark gave me a fine sense of your comprehension — it seemed to me a case of rem acu tetigit. I am thoroughly satisfied