to be an effect of the railway shaking.
There is no doubt of the fact that, after the Staplehurst experience, it
tells more and more (railway shaking, that is) instead of, as one might
have expected, less and less." The last remark is a strange one, from a
man of his sagacity; but it was part of the too-willing self-deception
which he practised, to justify him in his professed belief that these
continued excesses of labour and excitement were really doing him no
harm. The day after that last letter he pushed on to Scotland, and on
the 17th wrote to his daughter from Glasgow. The closing night at
Manchester had been enormous. "They cheered to that extent after it was
over that I was obliged to huddle on my clothes (for I was undressing to
prepare for the journey) and go back again. After so heavy a week, it
_was_ rather stiff to start on this long journey at a quarter to two in
the morning; but I got more sleep than I ever got in a railway-carriage
before. . . . I have, as I had in the last series of readings, a curious
feeling of soreness all round the body--which I suppose to arise from
the great exertion of voice . . ." Two days later he wrote to his
sister-in-law from the Bridge of Allan, which he had reached from
Glasgow that morning. "Yesterday I was so unwell with an internal malady
that occasionally at long intervals troubles me a little, and it was
attended with the sudden loss of so much blood, that I wrote to F. B.
from whom I shall doubtless hear to-morrow. . . . I felt it a little more
exertion to read, afterwards, and I passed a sleepless night after that
again; but otherwise I am in good force and spirits to-day: I may say,
in the best force. . . . The quiet of this little place is sure to do me
good." He rallied again from this attack, and, though he still
complained of sleeplessness, wrote cheerfully from Glasgow on the 21st,
describing himself indeed as confined to his room, but only because "in
close hiding from a local poet who has christened his infant son in my
name, and consequently haunts the building." On getting back to
Edinburgh he wrote to me, with intimation that many troubles had beset
him; but that the pleasure of his audiences, and the providence and
forethought of Messrs. Chappell, had borne him through. "Everything is
done for me with the utmost liberality and consideration. Every want I
can have on these journeys is anticipated, and not the faintest spark of
the tradesman spirit ever peep