One day, after searching thus in vain for a passage
from Ben Jonson, he said: "It is all the more provoking as I do not
doubt many a friend here might help me out with it."
When away from home on his lecture tours, Emerson did not fail to have
his share of disasters. He wrote from Albany, in 1865, to Mr. Fields:
--An unlucky accident drives me here to make a draft on you for fifty
dollars, which I hope will not annoy you. The truth is that I lost my
wallet--I fear to some pickpocket--in Fairhaven, Vermont, night before
last (some $70 or $80 in it), and had to borrow money of a Samaritan
lady to come here. I pray you do not whisper it to the swallows for
fear it should go to ----, and he should print it in "Fraser." I am
going instantly to the best book-shop to find some correspondent of
yours to make me good. I was to have read a lecture here last night,
but the train _walked_ all the way through the ice, sixty miles,
from six in the morning, and arrived here at _ten_ at night. I
hope still that Albany will entreat me on its knees to read to-night.
One other piece of bad news if you have not already learned it. Can
you not burn down the Boston Athenaeum to-night? for I learned by
chance that they have a duplicate of the "Liber Amoris." I hope for
great prosperity on my journey as the necessary recoil of such
adversities, and specially to pay my debts in twenty days. Yours, with
constant regard,
R. W. EMERSON.
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