ould be enormous. Would I name a
sum? a minimum sum that I required to have, in any case? Would I look at
it as a Fortune, and in no other point of view? I shook my head, and
said, my tongue was tied on the subject for the present; I might be more
communicative at another time. Exit Beale in confusion and
disappointment.)--You will be happy to hear that at one on Friday, the
Lord Provost, Dean of Guild, Magistrates, and Council of the ancient
city of Edinburgh will wait (in procession) on their brother freeman, at
the Music Hall, to give him hospitable welcome. Their brother freeman
has been cursing their stars and his own, ever since the receipt of
solemn notification to this effect." But very grateful, when it came,
was the enthusiasm of the greeting, and welcome the gift of the silver
wassail-bowl which followed the reading of the _Carol_. "I had no
opportunity of asking any one's advice in Edinburgh," he wrote on his
return. "The crowd was too enormous, and the excitement in it much too
great. But my determination is all but taken. I must do _something_, or
I shall wear my heart away. I can see no better thing to do that is half
so hopeful in itself, or half so well suited to my restless state."

What is pointed at in those last words had been taken as a ground of
objection, and thus he turned it into an argument the other way. During
all these months many sorrowful misunderstandings had continued in his
home, and the relief sought from the misery had but the effect of making
desperate any hope of a better understanding. "It becomes necessary,"
he wrote at the end of March, "with a view to the arrangements that
would have to be begun next month if I decided on the Readings, to
consider and settle the question of the Plunge. Quite dismiss from your
mind any reference whatever to present circumstances at home. Nothing
can put _them_ right, until we are all dead and buried and risen. It is
not, with me, a matter of will, or trial, or sufferance, or good humour,
or making the best of it, or making the worst of it, any longer. It is
all despairingly over. Have no lingering hope of, or for, me in this
association. A dismal failure has to be borne, and there an end. Will
you then try to think of this reading project (as I do) apart from all
personal likings and dislikings, and solely with a view to its effect on
that peculiar relation (personally affectionate, and like no other
man's) which subsists between me and the publi