a pouring of hundreds into a
place already full to the throat, such indescribable confusion, such a
rending and tearing of dresses, and yet such a scene of good humour on
the whole, I never saw the faintest approach to. While I addressed the
crowd in the room, G addressed the crowd in the street. Fifty frantic
men got up in all parts of the hall and addressed me all at once. Other
frantic men made speeches to the walls. The whole B family were borne in
on the top of a wave, and landed with their faces against the front of
the platform. I read with the platform crammed with people. I got them
to lie down upon it, and it was like some impossible tableau or gigantic
pic-nic--one pretty girl in full dress, lying on her side all night,
holding on to one of the legs of my table! It was the most extraordinary
sight. And yet, from the moment I began to the moment of my leaving off,
they never missed a point, and they ended with a burst of cheers. . . . The
expenditure of lungs and spirits was (as you may suppose) rather great;
and to sleep well was out of the question. I am therefore rather fagged
to-day; and as the hall in which I read to-night is a large one, I must
make my letter a short one. . . . My people were torn to ribbons last
night. They have not a hat among them--and scarcely a coat." He came
home for his Christmas rest by way of Manchester, and thus spoke of the
reading there on the 14th of December. "_Copperfield_ in the Free Trade
Hall last Saturday was really a grand scene."

He was in southern latitudes after Christmas, and on the 8th of January
wrote from Torquay: "We are now in the region of small rooms, and
therefore this trip will not be as profitable as the long one. I imagine
the room here to be very small. Exeter I know, and that is small too. I
am very much used up on the whole, for I cannot bear this moist warm
climate. It would kill me very soon. And I have now got to the point of
taking so much out of myself with _Copperfield_ that I might as well do
Richard Wardour. . . . This is a very pretty place--a compound of Hastings,
Tunbridge Wells, and little bits of the hills about Naples; but I met
four respirators as I came up from the station, and three pale curates
without them who seemed in a bad way." They had been not bad omens,
however. The success was good, at both Torquay and Exeter; and he closed
the month, and this series of the country readings, at the great towns
of Liverpool and Chester. "The