version 1: the letter

"If we happen, under certain circumstances, to have written and sealed and despatched a letter to a friend, which, however, does not find him, but is brought back to us, and we open it at the distance of some considerable time, a singular emotion is produced in us, on breaking up our own seal, and conversing with our altered self as with a third person."

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version 2: the toot

"If we happen, under certain circumstances, to have written and sealed and despatched a [toot] to [the Fediverse], and at the distance of some considerable time it is brought back to us [by a belated boost], and we open it, a singular emotion is produced in us, on breaking up our own seal, and conversing with our altered self as with a third person."

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"... for youth, which is so rich in undeveloped force, knows not what it squanders when, to the anguish which a loss occasions, it adds so many sorrows of its own production, as if it meant then first to give the right value to what is gone forever."

"He likewise felt so convinced that his present loss was the sole, the first, the last, he ever could experience in life, that he turned away from every consolation which aimed at showing that his sorrows might be less than endless."

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https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36483/pg36483.txt

" ... besides the unwearied attentions of his family, the love of his brothers and sisters, which first becomes truly sensible in times of distress and want, ..."

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https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36483/pg36483.txt

" ... so that Nature, not inclined to let her darling perish utterly, visited him with sickness, to make an outlet for him on the other side."

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https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36483/pg36483.txt

" ... leaving his friend not even the respite of the smallest momentary self-deception, but treading down every lurking-place in which he might have saved himself from desperation, ... "

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https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36483/pg36483.txt

" ... even the healing force of youth gave nourishment and violence to the power of sorrow."

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#ThomasCarlyle #vol1book2ch1

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/36483/pg36483.txt