THE WIFE OP THOMAS CARLYLE. 185 would have written to your husband's dictation as I have done to yours ? ' He asked me if your name were John or William — plainly he had lodged an angel unawares." Carlyle's sins, we must own, were more those of omission than commission, but he was liable to be seized at any time by some whimsical desire that had to be gratified at once, whatever the inconvenience to the house- hold. Thus his wife writes to her friend, Dr. Russell, apologizing for her delay in sending him a photograph and letter : " On the New Year's morning itself, Mr. C. ' got up off his wrong side,' a by no means uncommon way of getting up for him in these overworked times ! And he suddenly discovered that his salvation, here and hereafter, depended on having, ' immediately, without a moment's delay,' a beggarly pair of old cloth boots, that the street-sweeper would hardly have thanked him for, ' lined with flannel, and new bound, and repaired generally ! ' and ' one of my women' — that is, my one woman and a half — was to be set upon the job ! Alas ! a regular shoemaker would have taken a whole day to it, and wouldn't have undertaken such a piece of work besides ! and Mr. C. scouted the idea of employing a shoemaker, as subversive of his authority as master of the house. So, neither my one woman, nor my half one, having any more capability of repairing ' generally ' these boots than of repairing the Great East- ern, there was no help for me but to sit down on the New Year's morning, with a great ugly beast of a man's boot in my lap, and scheme, and stitch, and worry over it till night ; and next morning begin on the other ! There, you see, were my two days eaten up very completely, and unexpectedly ; and so it goes on, ' always a something ' (as my dear mother used to say)." Her difficulties with servants form a tragi-comedy by themselves, very funny in some of its details, but a very
