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Show REPEATED HIS GREAT WORK When Thomas Carlyle Proved Invul. nerable to the "Slings and Arrow of Outrageous Fortune." In 1835 there occurred an Incident which would have deranged an ordi- nary man. Thomas Carlyle was living at 5 Cheyne row, Chelsea, near London. Lon-don. He had not earned a penny, says he to himself, "by the craft of literature litera-ture for 23 months." But with the push of a tiger he was plowing his way through his "History of the French Revolution." The first volume was finished. It had taken him five months to write it. He loaned the Mss. to John Stuart Mill. On a certain morning Mill called upon Carlyle, his face as white as ashes. After two hours of awkward fumbling Mill managed man-aged to tell it he had left the priceless price-less Mss. on a desk and the housemaid had taken it to light the morning fire In the grate 1 Carlyle was like a stricken man. But one day, as he sat dumbly at his window, he saw cheery bricklayers building a house, brick by brick. He burst into tears and, sobbing sob-bing like a child, he cried : "I, too, can bring back thought by thought!" He did. He recalled all of the Mss. and rewrote It. What torture I |